
NACK 



■ 







dass_B.|?J.a/_ 

Book._iLj£C.l 

Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



1 



A REPLY TO HARNACK 



ON 



The Essence of Christianity 




HERMANN CREMER 



A REPLY TO HARNACK 

ON 

The Essence of Christianity 



Lectures 'Delivered in the Summer 0/1901 
before Students of all Faculties in the 
University of Greifswald 



BY 

Hermann Cremer, D.D., LL.D. 

Ordinary Professor of Theology 



Translated from the Third German Edition 

BY 

Bernhard Pick, Ph.D., D.D. 

Author of "The Extra-Canonical Life of Christ," etc. 



u\ i 




FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
1903 



THE LlBRAWV OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

JUL 2 1903 

Q Copyright Entry 

Class «v XXc No. 

l> $ V D $ 
COPY B. 






Copyright, 1903, by 

FUNK & WAGNAIJ,S COMPANY 

[Printed in the United States of A merica] 

Published in June, 1903 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Translator's Preface vii 

Author's Preface xi 

I. Which Christianity ? i 

II. The Apostolic Message 19 

III. The Record of Christ According to the Synoptic 

Account 37 

IV. The Johannean Account 62 

V. Critical Considerations 76 

VI. Anti-Critique 102 

VII. Faith and History 116 

VIII. The Person of Christ 146 

IX. Appearance of Jesus and Reception in Israel . 170 

X. The Miracle-Ministry of Jesus 192 

XI. The Work of Jesus ; or, His Suffering and 

Death, His Resurrection and Ascension . . 212 

XII. The Essence of Christianity 252 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



*T* H£ author of these lectures, Hermann Cremer 
g i (born 1834), is well known to theological 

MEM students by his ' ' Biblisch-Theologisches 
Worterbuch der neutestamentlichen Gra- 
citat " (Gotha, 1866 ; 9th edition, 1902; English 
translation by W. Urwick : ' ' Biblico-Theological 
Lexicon of New Testament Greek,' ' Edinburgh, 1872; 
3d edition, 1886). His theological standpoint is 
expressed in the dedication of these lectures to Pastor 
F. von Bodelschwingh, D.D., in Bethel, near Biele- 
feld, the promoter and founder of many institutions 
connected with the Inner Mission: "To thee, my 
dear brother, this work is dedicated to attest that one 
can only minister unto the poor and the wretched, 
unto the children and the aged, unto the sick and 
dying, and therefore only unto those that are whole, 
by representing before their eyes the Christ of the 
Bible, the Christ of the apostolic preaching, the Christ 
who came down from heaven and took upon Him our 
flesh and blood to die for us and to live for and with 
us. May one better understand the 'other Christ,' 
but one can only believe in that Christ in whom the 
children also believe." 

Strange to say, Cremer' s ledlures have the same 
title as Harnack's, but here it is true: "Duo cum 
faciunt idem non est idem," and the fa6l that Cremer's 
ledlures were issued within four months in three 

vii 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



editions shows that not all are prepared to accept 
Harnack's definition of Christianity with his " other 
Christ. " 

At the end of these lectures Cremer refers to a sen- 
tence of Harnack which is characteristic of the present 
situation : ' ' How often in history is theology only the 
means to set aside religion. " At the end of the eigh- 
teenth century and beginning of the nineteenth, ration- 
alism had full sway in Germany. The high seats of 
Protestant theology were occupied by rationalists, 
whose aim was to unfit the theological students for the 
ministry. What did rationalism accomplish? Let us 
hear one of these teachers, Chr. F. Ammon, ofGottingen 
(died 1850) . In a sermon which he delivered on January 
1, 1 80 1, he said : "Not enough that the temples are 
deserted; not enough that the Divine usages and rites, 
with which men as sensual beings will never be wholly 
able to dispense, have more than ever been lost out of 
the general interest ; not enough, finally, that the 
churchly public spirit of the Christians, which once 
opposed hosts and overcame the forces of the most 
powerful states, have almost disappeared ; even the 
belief in the most essential truths of religion has lost 
for very many its certainty and power; skepticism and 
indifference have taken its place; the spirit of devotion 
and of prayer, yea, even the idea of God and a future 
world, have become strange to whole families and to 
whole societies, and the present sensual disposition of 
mind need only to last yet a decade in order to turn 
over the entire future generation to the nameless 
misery which is inseparable from a ruling unbelief in 
religion. ' ' 

viii 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



The man who thus spoke was no pietist and no ad- 
vocate of orthodoxy. He is afraid of the seven 
other spirits more wicked than the one which rational- 
ism has cast out. Experience teaches that man can 
not live by negations ; he wants something positive. 
* ' Inquietum est cor nostrum donee restat in te ' ' ; such 
was the experience of St. Augustine. Where this rest 
is found the Gospel plainly teaches. The question, 
What think ye of Christ ? is the old, old question, and 
yet ever new. The contribution of the nineteenth 
century to the solution of this old question may be 
seen from my paper on the ' ' Life-of-Jesus Literature 
in the Nineteenth Century," published in the Homiletic 
Review (New York, 1902, pp. 407-412, 504-509), and 
it is doubtful whether the present century, with its de- 
structive tendency, will be able to bring anything new, 
when German, French, Dutch, and English writers 
have already exhausted their ingenuity. That which 
seemed to have satisfied one generation, another re- 
jected ; yea, the very authors of this or that theory 
changed their own systems, thus again verifying the 
saying : 

Our little systems have their day, 
They have their day and cease to be. 

And, as in the case of the life of Jesus, so it will be 
when the Gospels are reconstructed according to the 
conceptions of modern writers. It stands to reason 
that if the old Gospels, which stood the test of centu- 
ries and conquered the world, can not satisfy — other- 
wise they would need no reconstruction — the recon- 
structed Gospels will be less satisfactory. Will they 

ix 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



lead to the confession of a Thomas : ' ' My Lord and 
my God?" * 

In translating these ledtures the aim has been to be 
faithful to the original text. Owing to the great sub- 
ject which is here treated, a subjedt which concerns the 
salvation of man, the author has evidently avoided 
that elegance of didlion which may captivate the mind 
but satisfies not the cravings of the soul and sends the 
heart empty away ; and, tho he spoke to students of 
the different faculties of the university, yet he spoke 
as a man to man, not in rhetorical flight, but with the 
courage of convidlion culminating in the sentiment, 
terse but full of meaning : Theologia cruris, Theologia 

lucis. 

B. P. 

March, 1903 



* A confession of which Professor Chase, of Cambridge, in his paper, 
"The Supernatural Element in the lord's Earthly Iyife in Relation to 
Historical Methods of Study" (London, 1903), remarks: "It is the last 
word we need, but we need it all. ' My Iyord ' will not do. We may call 
Him Lord, Lord, and yet do not the things which He says. ' Many will 
say to me in that day, Lord, Lord . . . and then will I profess unto 
them, I never knew you.' ' Lord ' gives right, but ' God ' gives power." 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



SN the year 1799 appeared Schleiermacher's 
4 "Discourses on Religion to the Cultured 
3»1 Among its Despisers, ' ' whom the rationalism 
of the eighteenth century had made what 
they were. In the winter of 1 899-1 900 Dr. Harnack 
delivered his ledtures on the essence of Christianity, 
in which he practically leads back to the views of the 
eighteenth century. Schleiermacher had to deal with 
an estrangement from the Gospel through the fault of 
rationalism ; Harnack, with an estrangement from 
Christianity through the fault of the attestation of the 
Gospel itself — the Gospel, in short, of the Bible and 
the Reformation. For not only the dodlrines devel- 
oped by theology with more or less skill, but the most 
essential traits of the New Testament Gospel, are the 
causes he assigns for unbelief among the cultured. 
On this account he presents another Gospel, nomi- 
nally obtained by way of historical criticism, which 
neither rests upon historical criticism nor is a Gospel 
for sinners. His supposition is not an historical but a 
dogmatical proposition — namely, that a person like the 
Christ of the New Testament preaching is an impossi- 
bility. From this proposition he construes, again from 
dogmatical reasons, what in the New Testament his- 
tory, and equally in the New Testament prediction, 
respectively, should be corredt or admissible, and thus 
he brings about a dogmatic conception which he calls 

xi 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



historical, and from which he now also estimates the 
New Testament history in dodtrine and life of the 
Church. That this estimate as well as his criticism of 
the New Testament account would prove otherwise if 
the first proposition read differently is indeed obvious 
to him. 

Accordingly, it was my task to examine how the 
New Testament knowledge of Jesus Christ originated, 
to delineate its contents, and thus to prove the truth 
as, according to my convidlion, it can only be proved. 
I have avoided, after the example of others, entering 
into the defeat of the general religious suppositions of 
Harnack. The things old and new about the Lord 
Christ, His relation to us and our relation to Him, of 
which I have spoken, Christendom must judge, for I 
desire to have nothing to myself in my belief. Aside 
from changes made necessary in the verbal order and 
some eliminations and additions, due to a regard for 
the difference between the written and spoken word, 
the ledlures remain as they were delivered. 

H. C. 

Greifswald, September 6, 1901 



Xll 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE 
ENGLISH EDITION 



IJTtF n the controversy with Harnack the question 
jliL£u is, whether the Christianity of the apostolic 
HHHl message is right, or whether it must be re- 
placed by a Christianity of modern reflection 
and still more modern enthusiasm. The Christianity 
of the apostolic message applies to the lost sinner, 
to whom it offers salvation through the wondrous 
grace of God, who became our brother in Christ Jesus. 
Harnack' s Christianity applies to the modern man 
who feels himself vexed, not by the moral but by the 
intellectual problem, because the moral problem, How 
is the sinner saved ? does not exist for him. For him 
Christianity is also a paradox, unexpected, it is true, 
but thoroughly rational ; for us it is an aCtual para- 
dox, a contradiction to all logical and moral sequence, 
and yet the truth. It follows that we must choose 
between the two. To assist in this choice it is hoped 
that, with the help of God, this book will contribute. 

H. Cremer 

Greifswald, May 26, 1903 



A REPLY TO HARNACK 



ON 



The Essence of Christianity 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



What is Christianity? What does it want? 
mm What does it offer ? What does it require ? 
1S%S1] What does it accomplish ? How find answers 
to these questions ? We do not care to know 
what this one or that one thinks of Christianity, nor 
yet what this one or that one passes off as Christianity, 
but what Christianity really is, what it really gives to 
us, what claims it actually makes. How are we to 
find this out ? One might almost despair when, with 
this question in the heart, he looks at Christendom 
divided into opposite camps. The Greek Catholic, 
Roman Catholic, and the Protestant Church with all 
its denominations, say to us : Here is Christ ! here is 
Christianity ! They all call themselves Christians, 
after the One man, for whom His attributive name, 
li Christ " — i.e., the Anointed, the King — has become 
a proper name. They all lay claim to us and ask us 
to join them, but they all are against each other, and 
accuse each other not only of error, but even of apos- 
tasy, of falsehood. How and whereby are we, then, to 
know who is right ? 

The question is not important merely to every one 
who in order to formulate an independent opinion 

1 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

wishes to get information concerning this force which 
moves the world ; it is necessary (for this they all 
assert) because, without an exception, we all need 
Christianity, and Christianity itself comes everywhere 
and in every form with the claim to exist for every 
one, to be necessary to every one, that his life may 
have something of value for time and eternity. 

We on our part rejecft from the start every tendency 
which will release us from the duty, and therefore 
also from the right, of free investigation of the truth 
and free decision for the truth, and which demands 
only an obedient attachment to the communion that 
stands before and above the individual, the Church, 
as having decided long ago what the truth is. As if, in 
spite of the conviction living in the Church or in any 
communion, the individual had not to come first to the 
same conviction of truth in order to belong inwardly 
to the communion or be able to work in reforming it ! 
In this protest we formally stand on the ground of 
the Reformation and of Protestantism. But in this 
we are not yet materially one with the churches of 
the Reformation and with that which is regarded in 
them as the essence of Christianity. By the same way 
the same result must first be obtained, if it can be ob- 
tained at all. Have the churches of the Reformation 
obtained this result ? Have they perceived the essence 
of Christianity ? Do they represent it ? Do they de- 
clare it ? Or have they and their members only opin- 
ions about Christianity — one this opinion, another that, 
but none of them the reality ? 

Aside from the consideration that these churches 
not only in common oppose Catholicism and papacy, 

2 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



but among themselves have also opposed each other 
most vehemently, and in part still oppose, it is more to 
the point to consider that we stand at present in the 
midst of a hotter and more serious battle. With the 
exception, perhaps, of the conflicts of the early Chris- 
tian centuries and of the Reformation, the present con- 
troversy is the severest that has ever been waged. We 
battle for the person and importance of Jesus Christ 
Himself. Indeed, we fight a battle in which no truce 
is possible. Victory for either side necessarily means 
the destruction of the other. It is the battle of one 
religion with another religion. The one regards Christ 
as a natural phenomenon of histor}^ appearing in the 
normal course of history, who w T orked and still works 
like every other important man, only that He sur- 
passes all others in power; w T ho in a singular and per- 
fect fidelity to His trust has put His gifts and the 
knowledge of God acquired in connection with them 
and the understanding of the world obtained by Him 
into such relations with motives and objedts that He 
alone solves the mysteries of our life and of the existence 
of the world, and shows a blessed goal for them both. 
We are to see in Christ the man in whom the good has 
become a reality in the world, and this realization of 
the good is to keep us from despair as we attempt such 
realization also. In looking to Divine Providence, 
which has called such a man into existence, we are to 
be assured of the forgiveness or pardon of our errors, 
our sins ; shown thereby we are to enjoy this knowl- 
edge of God which we thus acquire, and by faith in 
this deed of God to strive after the like realization of 
the good. 

3 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Thus the one. The other religion regards Christ 
as an entirely irregular appearance in history, as a 
man indeed like ourselves, partaking of our flesh and 
blood, who became our life's comrade, our brother, 
whose complete identification with our race is a matter 
of certainty, and who by this membership in our race, 
for our benefit first became everything that He was — 
no, not was, but is. The meaning of His life and 
nature is unique, not merely because it belongs to no 
other individual man, but because it does not apper- 
tain to the race of man as such. It does not belong to 
Him because He is man come out from our race, but 
because He became man, entered into our race ; He ex- 
isted before He became man, He was and is God in 
eternal manner, and forever He united Himself with 
us and our race, as only He can do it, who is God and 
Lord over all, and thus became our brother, who 
shares everything with us, our misery, our judgment, 
that everything that He is may redound to our 
benefit. 

According to the religion first named, Christ is a 
man like ourselves, fully and completely and only a 
man, nothing else, only distinguished by His very 
prominent, spiritually moral gifts, whereby He worked 
Himself up to a perfedl communion with God, showed 
Himself to be in full and blessed independence of the 
world, and proved His religious and moral highness 
in a unique domination of the world, so that the suffer- 
ing also which was inflicted upon Him could not de- 
stroy the peace of His religious and moral attitude 
toward God and the brethren. Thus He was a man 
without an equal, inviting us to an indefatigable emu- 

4 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



lation, but a man whom, without deceiving ourselves, 
we can not even follow in the initial steps. For we 
all have to deal with sin, and, indeed, with our sin, with 
the sin in us, as He did not, and on this account our 
task compared to His is not realizable. But on the 
other hypothesis He is the God-man, whose incarna- 
tion and humanity is a humiliation continuing itself 
unto death and down into the realm of the dead, that 
in the deepest depths of our misery we should not be 
deprived of the sympathizing Man of Pity and Savior. 

Of these two contrasted faiths, which, then, is right? 

It is felt more and more, tho not always clearly per- 
ceived, that we can not avoid this question nor super- 
ciliously postpone its answer, as that Roman once did 
who was to pass the sentence on Christ. The jesting 
attitude that it is impossible to know and to say what 
is truth, what in the last analysis can alone claim to 
be reality and authority, is no longer possible. Our 
life not only loses in value when the so-called religious 
interest expressing itself in the search for truth is not 
and can not be satisfied; but we have lived, cared, 
worked, fought, suffered entirely in vain if we are 
obliged to walk our way without an answer to this 
question. We are then nothing but an incomprehen- 
sible play of the waves rushing onward in the vast 
sea. Rather not to be at all than to live to no 
purpose and without aim, to live a life which for 
itself is hardly worth the while to be lived, except in 
view of something beyond it, for which we are here 
and whither we hope through Christ to come! Before 
we resign ourselves to that view, let us endeavor by 
all means to find the truth. We have the truth by 

5 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

having Christ. We have Christ only when we have 
Him as He actually is; otherwise we have Him not, in 
spite of all our opinions about Him. On this account 
the question concerning the truth is very closely con- 
nected with the question concerning Christ, concern- 
ing the Messiah, concerning Christianity and its essence. 
Iyet the decision be what it may, here it must be made. 
But how are we to make the inquiry in order to 
reach the decision, to discover the truth concerning 
Christ, to find truth itself ? Whence are we to find out 
what, on the whole, is real, true Christianity? One 
says : " Believe in Christ. " Yes, what shall I believe 
of Him? Or shall I believe nothing of Him, only 
believe in Him ? Or only believe Him ? What is it 
to believe ? What did Christ intend ? What has He 
done? One says : fi This is an historical question, at 
least this last question as to what He intended and 
did, and as an historical question it can only be solved 
by way and with the means of historical inquiry." 
That it is from one aspect an historical question is 
true, but it is questionable whether it is merely an his- 
torical question, and whether it is to be answered by 
the ordinary means of other historical inquiry. For 
the question concerning that which Christ did and 
whereby He worked is closely connected with the 
question whether we now live in and by the after- 
effects which are called forth by His person and His 
activity, or whether He works even now and will con- 
tinue to work ? It is right to distinguish between the 
present appearance of Christianity and its first appear- 
ance in history. It is also right to be referred to this 
very first appearance, to the form in which Christian- 



\- 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



ity has gained its first victories, when the question as 
to the essence of Christianity is raised. Where Chris- 
tianity gained the vidlory over the world we must look 
for signs of the power by which the victory was won. 
There, if anywhere, the essence of this world-historical 
phenomenon will come out the purest, and there will 
gush forth for all time the fountain of youth from 
which it can renew itself ; for all manifestations in 
the world are maintained by the forces of their begin- 
ning. We must thus go back to the time of the 
beginning. But — where lies the time of the beginning 
of Christianity? 

This is the first great question which we must 
answer. Is the appearance and work of the person of 
Jesus Christ the time of the beginning of Christianity ? 
And is Christianity the religion which fesus has prac- 
tised, which He has attested, to whose pradlise and 
attendance He has invited men and shown them the 
way, a fire which by His preaching He has kindled 
in the hearts of His hearers ? Are we to regard the 
Christianity of Christ, as it has been called, as that in 
which the essence of Christianity has come out with 
firstness and with original power? Or is the power 
which proceeds from Christ and to-day yet produces Chris- 
tianity somethifig else than the religion which He Him- 
self practised? We see already that the question as 
to the time of the beginning of Christianity leads us 
to the most serious difficulties. Were Christianity the 
religion which Christ Himself had practised we stand 
almost helpless in presence of the sources on which 
our inquiry depends ; for, tho we obtain a clear insight 
into His own religious life, into His faith, His prayer, 

7 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

His walk in the law of God, that which the Gospels 
record as the principal thing about Jesus is not this, 
but that which He does for us and whereby He lives 
and suffers for men. Our sources are actually the 
oldest attestations of Christianity, of the Christian 
message, which we have. This is a generally ac- 
knowledged fa<ft with regard to our New Testament 
writings wholly aside from the question as to the 
credibility of their contents. But now these very 
writings show in Christ anything but a founder of re- 
ligion. When Christianity is called after Him, it is 
not because — according to these sources — He has prac- 
tised and announced this religion first. He proclaims 
the Father, before whom He walks Himself, and on 
whom He Himself believes, and He also opens the access 
unto the Father, not by His teaching, not by His ex- 
ample, but by His death, by the forgiveness of our 
sins, which He effecfts. Thus, altho He is what we 
are, yet He stands in a different relation to the Father 
than we. He is our brother, who works for us, to whom 
we owe everything ; not the brother who has nothing 
else for Himself but His brethren. What He has we 
are to have, what we have He will share ; He shares 
our sin and guilt without having guilt ; we are to have 
the forgiveness which He has purchased for us. He 
is not, like ourselves, a subject of religion ; on the contrary, 
He is the object of the religion, the object of Christianity. 
He is not — again according to our sources — a man of 
history, a man who once was like others, whose 
importance is to be understood from that which they 
have been for their time and from their after-effedls. 
We hear nothing of after-effe<5ls of Jesus, only of 

8 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



effecfls, and indeed of effedls which after His earthly 
history He exerts from his present place, from the 
place of God beyond this world — from heaven. This 
is not the point of view from which that is regarded 
which is otherwise called after-effecfts, in speaking of 
Socrates, of Plato, of L,uther, of Goethe. It is a real 
activity of Christ from heaven such as is not possible 
to any of the blessed, to the righteous made perfect. 
What is recorded of Christ's earthly activity is only 
the beginning, the acftual tenor and aim of his activity; 
He now only unfolds. As to this, something is indeed 
said of Him which has not and can not have its equal 
in all history. Are we to eliminate it, on this account, 
from the very start as unhistorical, and treat every- 
thing which is reported to us of this activity of Jesus 
in accordance with the canon that, correcftly consid- 
ered, there can not be present effects but only after- 
effects — historical effects of Jesus ? 

To this must be further added the deeds which Jesus 
did on earth, which otherwise do not and can not 
take place on historical soil, in accordance with the 
natural construction of things — His miracles, and 
also the miracles which were wrought on Him: His 
birth, His endowment with the Spirit of God beyond 
measure, His transfiguration, His resurrection and 
ascension. How are we to know the authenticity 
of the writings or of the testimonies which we have 
concerning Him and His history and importance? 
Are we to eliminate all this miraculous element as 
incredible? The New Testament writings are the 
documents of the first annunciation of Christianity 
which we have. Shall we say that already when 

9 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

these documents appeared, Christ was no more under- 
stood ; that through the first apostolic proclamation 
a garland of legends had been wound around His head 
which we must resolutely tear away in order that 
only the historical may remain ? And what, then, is 
really historical in each of these unique phenomena? 
Or shall we take everything for granted that is said 
of Him, and with it acknowledge a record and a char- 
acter that stand absolutely alone in history ? Every 
criticism of our sources, be it of this or that kind, is 
not only an historical but a dogmatical criticism — 
Harnack criticizes these sources just as dogmatically 
as others who do not share his standpoint, only that 
he, protected by the authority of his great name, 
designates his dogmatical critique historical. 

If we are to begin by distinguishing and eliminating 
everything which goes beyond the measure of the 
human, let us also understand that Christianity will 
then have an entirely different face from that which it 
adlually has in our New Testament writings, and that 
the religion in which the Christ of the New Testament 
is the object of faith is entirely different from the 
religion whose first, most prominent, and most effective 
subjedl is Jesus considered merely as a man. We have, 
then, to deal with different religions — with the religion 
of the New Testament and with the religion that 
results from the foregoing kind of criticism. 

To this there is to be added yet another fa6l. There 
is really a difference, tho no opposition and no dispute, 
between the Gospel which Jesus has proclaimed and 
the Gospel concerning Jesus as the disciples have 
proclaimed it and by means of which they overcame 

10 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



the world. It was not Jesus' proclamation that 
founded Christianity in the world, but the proclama- 
tion of the disciples about Jesus. Jesus Himself ac- 
complished nothing until His death. Never, perhaps, 
has a life ended so unsuccessful as the life of Jesus. 
Even His disciples, who had been with Him and about 
Him all the time, and had retained their hope in Him 
till the night in which He was betrayed, finally aban- 
doned belief in Him. Only His resurrection could 
bring back their belief, now become a faith of a different 
kind — firmer, more joyous, more unswerving, more 
certain of victory; but how small are even these effects 
that immediately followed the resurrection compared 
with those which the disciples later proclaimed ! L,et us 
only be reminded how the apostle (I. Corinthians xv) 
enumerates the appearances of the risen Savior, and 
how an entirely new and different result is attained by 
Peter's pentecostal preaching (Adls ii). Only the 
Gospel of Jesus, as the disciples have preached it, 
had, as we should say, an efFedt. To their preaching 
Christianity owes its existence as a world-historical 
phenomenon. 

To this proclamation, however, we owe entirely 
our knowledge about Jesus, His appearance, His 
activity, His fate, so that we can say that all docu- 
ments which we have concerning Him reduce them- 
selves to the preaching of the disciples. All New 
Testament writings are documentary vouchers of the 
first fundamental preaching of Christ. They mediate 
to us the knowledge of His history by declaring the 
understanding of that history and of its importance. 
This also holds good of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 

11 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

which, according to chapter ii : 3, was written by a 
disciple of the apostles, and thereby testifies unto 
us of the belief in the importance of the person and 
history of Jesus which lived in the congregations 
founded by the apostles. Now this apostolic or New 
Testament preaching contains for every historian, 
whose obje<5t is the investigation and exhibition of 
the spiritual life-movement of humanity, a series of the 
most critical, most exceptional moments. The whole 
history of Jesus is a history without comparison, going 
far beyond everything which legend, the mythology 
of nations, has shaped. On the one hand, it is the 
history of a man who lived, felt, suffered humanly 
as only one could humanly live, feel, and suffer, who 
has entered into the fate of the noblest of all times — 
namely, to be rejected and killed. So only can one con- 
ceive it. And, on the other hand, it is a history com- 
mencing with a miracle not having its equal, inter- 
blended with miracles such as none of the servants of 
God have ever performed, and in its earthly course 
closing again with a miracle not having its equal. Such 
a history, so completely different from any other part 
of known history, stands, so far, unhinged from the his- 
torical life of humanity. The events or happenings, 
however, which make it a history beyond comparison 
are so insolubly connected with Christianity — at least, 
with that Christianity to which in our query we must 
first of all go back — that either must stand or fall 
with the other. Shall we now say that this union of 
history and religion is only the produdl of the concep- 
tion which Jesus found among his disciples? Have 
the disciples, as children of their time, by means of the 

12 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



ideas received by them from the age they lived in, made 
from the Gospel of Jesus a Gospel concerning Jesus? 
And should it, therefore, be necessary to go back to 
the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus Himself in order to 
find what real Christianity is according to that ? But 
where have we this Gospel proclaimed by Jesus? 
After what critical standard are we to reconstruct it ? 
For only by a reconstruction could we restore it. And 
after we had reconstructed it, would we not also have 
to distinguish in the preaching of Jesus between the 
transient and lasting, between the form of his thoughts 
belonging to His people and His time and the everlast- 
ing tenor expressed in contemporaneous form ? Are, 
for instance, the discourses and sayings of Jesus 
which refer to His second coming genuine or spurious ? 
And when genuine, have they still the same value to- 
day or not ? Jesus speaks of angels as of something 
real, of their interest in our destiny, of their ministry 
at the end of time, when the wicked shall be separated 
from the righteous. Is He right ? 

In the Tubingen school the apostle Paul was regarded 
as the acflual creator of Christianity as a world-religion. 
Now he is regarded as the one who, in spite of his 
great success, yes, perhaps because of the same, is 
said to have tempered the Christian preaching in the 
strongest manner with thoughts and ideas of Jewish 
religious speculation, so that he no more distinguished 
between religion and theology. Christ alone is the 
real author of Christianity; from His preaching only 
can be seen what Christianity actually should be and 
effecfl ; according to it we can estimate what it became 
and what it can be, when it is clearly set forth. It 

13 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

depends on this pure comprehension of His preaching, 
what He actually said, what He meant to say, and 
not that which tradition makes Him say, nor that 
in which there is mere adaptation to the ideas of 
His people. Thus we could only come to the 
knowledge of true Christianity by an energetic 
critical labor. Such labor can, of course, only be 
undertaken by science. To the labor and results of 
science we are thus directed with our desire for knowl- 
edge and understanding of what Christianity is. 
Science only is to give us the real and true religion. 
And yet every one, even the commonest man, has not 
only the most urgent interest to find out what Chris- 
tianity is; he has also the faculty to decide for himself , 
without the help of science, whether or not in that which 
offers itself to him as religion he finds God and God's 
grace; if the religion which Jesus practised, proclaimed 
and demanded comes forth so effectively in the Gospel 
of Jesus, and is so clearly recognizable that, in spite 
of all veilings, obscurations, and pollutions, it yet 
exercises its power to this day, so that, as far as our 
question is concerned, it only depends on a proper set- 
ting forth of this, its power, free from all accessory ap- 
pearances and additions. Harneck has distinguished 
between i ' powers ' ' and ' ' props ' ' in this matter of 
comprehending truth. The distinction is especially 
flattering to the semiculture of our times. We, the 
cultured ones, have the "powers"; the remainder of 
mankind reach up to it only by means of the ' ' props. ' ' 
Is the Gospel to be understood only by the cultured ? 
We need to have this contrast only uttered to feel it as 
the frivolous boasting of a so-called aristocracy of cul- 

14 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



ture, especially in matters of religion, which every one, 
no matter what his position, must be able to under- 
stand, or religion is a palpable absurdity. 

Our present task, that we are to perform for those 
who are not able to do it, is to strip the real Gospel 
of all the Jewish and theological covers which encase 
it, proclaim the pure Gospel thus obtained to our 
whole people, and effedt by it at last the purification and 
completion of the Reformation, commenced, indeed, in 
the sixteenth century, but now stuck fast for want of 
courage and knowledge. But it is indeed a question 
whether the difference between ' ' powers ' ' and ' ' props ' ' 
(tho it covers a theory that is intolerable in matters of 
religious life and the religious communion) will ever 
cease. But suppose we have the task we have named, 
including the task of completing the Reformation or 
are accomplishing a new Reformation, who has hitherto 
spoken the redeeming word ? Who has given us the re- 
constructed, genuine Gospel ? Ritschl or Herrmann ? 
Holztmann or Baldensperger ? or even Harneck ? But, 
in f adl, we have not that task. The apostolic preaching 
of the Gospel not merely contains but is truly the eter- 
nal Gospel. There remains, indeed, a difference be- 
tween the orthodox and liberal, a difference which 
only the coming of Him will remove from the world 
who once asked: Howbeit when the Son of Man com- 
eth, shall He find faith on the earth ? 

Let us revert to a fadl already alluded to, which 
hitherto has not been sufficiently appreciated — name- 
ly, the unity of the New Testament testimony with 
regard to all that it says of the person, work, des- 
tiny, activity of Jesus, and of the importance of 

15 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Jesus to us. The New Testament writings are by- 
different authors and show many differences — whether 
explicable or not, we have here not to investigate. 
The synoptic account of the appearance of Jesus 
differs from the Johannean account, the one being 
a record of the teachings, deeds, and destinies of 
the miraculously born man Jesus, who died on 
the cross, and rose again after three days, and the 
other a history of one who was primarily the shad- 
owing forth of the Logos, the Word made flesh. 
Think also of the Jewish Christianity of James's 
epistle and of the Apocalypse on the one hand, the 
Jewish Christianity of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
on the other hand, and add to these the Gentile Chris- 
tian Gospel as Paul proclaimed and represented it. 
But in spite of every supposed or real difference, all the 
New Testament writings agree in that which they say 
of the mystery of the Christ's person, of the importance 
of His destiny for us, and of the everlasting significance 
of His person, the matters which decide our eternal des- 
tiny, and that of the whole world's. Had there existed a 
difference in this respedl — e.g. , between Paul and James 
— it were out-and-out inconceivable, especially incon- 
ceivable in the Jewish Christian James, that it is not 
even mentioned, let alone that it should not have come 
into the foreground. The oldest appellation of the 
Christians, which is evidently of Jewish origin, reads : 
"They that call upon the name of the Lord Jesus." 
They are thus people who pray to Jesus. They consider, 
therefore, Jesus, and, indeed, the Crucified and Risen 
One, as one who is God and Lord. The Christians on 
their part accept this designation in spite of the accen- 

16 



WHICH CHRISTIANITY? 



tuation of the unity of God, in which they fully agree 
with Israel. Thus they are called in the A6ts of the 
Apostles and also by Paul. Could it be conceivable 
that a Jewish Christian, like the author of James's 
Epistle, should not have opposed, in the name of the 
Jews and in the name of Israelitish monotheism, such 
a deification of man if it had been the sign of the 
original Jewish Christianity not to regard Jesus as 
God and not to pray to him ? No ; the difference, 
which for a time really existed in the apostolic circle, 
until it was determined and overcome, did not at all 
concern the person of Christ, nor the importance of His 
work, His suffering, death, and resurrection for us. 
It concerned merely a question of missionary practise, 
which might indeed be a fundamental question, ulti- 
mately connected with the importance of Christ and His 
work for us, but which was first of all a question of mis- 
sionary practise. It was the question whether the mem- 
bers of the Gentile w r orld could have part in the Gospel 
without first becoming members of Israel's communion; 
whether the Divine election which Israel enjoyed had 
now turned to the Gentiles after Israel had shown 
itself unbelieving. It was firmly settled that we 
can only partake of the salvation by the free Divine 
eledlion, that there exists no natural right to salvation 
or redemption. But it w T as not yet clearly known that 
Israel's election had actually come to naught until the 
time when the Gentiles should be converted. (The 
law was still regarded as the condition under which 
the believers became partakers of the grace of redemp- 
tion, without understanding that the law without ex- 
ception denied the salvation to every Israelite. ) But 

17 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

of a Jewish Christianity ', which in the fnndame?ital ques- 
tions concerning the person and importance of Jesus 
Christ had differed from the apostolic prediclio?i y zve hear 
nothing during the actual apostolic time. This only be- 
longs to a much later time. 

In thus obtaining a unitary aspedl of the New Testa- 
ment authors with regard to the person and importance 
of Jesus, we must place before ourselves the consensus 
of their affirmation in connexion with the view of Christ 
Himself as stated by them. We must then consider 
the difficulties which stand in our way in acknowl- 
edging this as an adlual Gospel, and we must answer 
the question as to what picture of Christ and His 
views is now set over against it to demand acknowl- 
edgment, and then decide the question accordingly — 
What is really the eternal Gospel ? Only in this way 
shall we see whether we have the true Gospel in the 
apostolic representation and in the representation of the 
evangelists, or whether we are obliged to look away 
from these, and attempt to discriminate the eternal 
content of the Gospels by minute critical processes. 



18 



II 

THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



V KT us begin with the apostolic message of Christ. 
h£m God has charged us (says Peter, in the 

HBBhI house of the Roman centurion Cornelius) to 
preach unto the people, and to testify that 
this Jesus, whom His people betrayed, whom the Gen- 
tiles crucified, and whom God raised up the third day, 
is ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. 
To Him bear all the prophets witness, that through 
His name every one that believeth in Him shall re- 
ceive remission of sins (A6ls x : 42, 43). That He is 
crucified is the sin of Israel, who became the traitor 
and murderer of Jesus ; and yet did this happen after 
God's premeditated counsel and will. For this, till then 
the greatest of all sins, the rejection of the Messiah 
bringing grace and salvation, God allowed, and He 
reckoned not unto the world its trespass — this sin and all 
sin that was done before and is connected with it — that 
we should have in Him who was crucified the forgive- 
ness of all sins. Redemption, forgiveness of sins, and 
with it deliverance from judgment and perdition are 
offered to us in Him. Till then the sin of the whole 
world had remained under Divine patience. Now 
comes the day when it is finished, and must, therefore, 
be visited upon the sinner. It is finished, indeed, but 
— it is not visited. No hand withereth which was 
lifted up against the Holy One of God ; no mouth 

19 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

groweth dumb which has derided Him. Jesus dies 
under the hands of His enemies, and not even one of 
his disciples steps in for Him. They are all offended 
in Him, as He prophesied to them. It must needs be 
that Jesus should die, He would rather die than judge 
the world, and He must die — die that the world 
should not be condemned. 

From that hour there is forgiveness of all sins. On 
this account Paul saith that he knew nothing, and is 
determined not to know anything, save Jesus, and Him 
crucified ; that in Jesus Christ we have forgiveness of 
sins through His blood ; that we are redeemed through 
His blood. John saith that the blood of Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God, cleanseth us from all sin, and thus 
frees us from all guilt ; that Jesus Christ, the right- 
eous, is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours 
only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Paul 
and John both say that in this Jesus who was cruci- 
fied for us, whom God raised up, the love of God has 
been manifested toward us so greatly and wondrously 
that God even commends and praises it. Peter, how- 
ever, saith : ' ' Know that ye were redeemed from your 
vain, superficial manner of life handed down from your 
fathers, not with corruptible things, with silver or 
gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a 
lamb without blemish and without spot." But of His 
resurrection he saith : ' ' Blessed be the God and Father 
of our Iyord Jesus Christ, who, according to His great 
mercy, begat us again unto a living hope by the resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ from the dead." 

Thus Jesus, who was betrayed, rejected, deserted, 
and given up even by His disciples, is praised by 

20 



THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



them as Christ. He is, indeed, the Christ through 
His sufferings, death, and resurrection. In this power 
to remit sin lies His importance as Christ. By this 
has He redeemed us. He has supplied us with the 
forgiveness of sin, so that we may now adtually expe- 
rience it. Not only according to but through that for- 
giveness is He the Christ, the King of the Kingdom of 
God, appointed and instituted by God as the redeemer 
and helper of all those who hope in Him. On Him 
who was crucified, whom God has raised up, but who 
forever has on Him the marks of that which He has 
experienced from us, as He is forever the same, whom 
God has justified by the resurrection from death — on 
Him we are to believe, Him we are to know and ac- 
knowledge as the I^ord and Judge, Redeemer and 
Savior, given to us by God, and ourselves as His re- 
deemed ones. Through the blood of the cross He 
made peace, on the cross He blotted out the hand- 
writing which testified and testifies against us. Not 
the life which Jesus lived saves us, but the death 
which He suffered and toward which His whole life 
pressed. How was this possible ? How is this to be 
known ? 

In the case of other friends who served us and were 
of profit to us throughout their lives, through whose 
service w T e derived something of our own life, and 
were in turn built up to be something to others — they 
seem to be torn from us by death. We ever feel the 
blank which the death of our beloved leaves in our 
life. The death of our parents, teachers, friends never 
enriches us. We most keenly feel this effect of death 
at the departure of the great — statesmen, poets, and 

21 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

thinkers — to whom we looked up, to whose words we 
listened, whose thoughts guided us, whose instructions 
we followed. It happens, indeed, that after their de- 
parture that part of them wanes which belongs to the 
perishing flesh ; that that is forgotten which one likes 
to forget in order not to darken the picture, and which 
rancorous jealousy or selfish uncharitableness, which 
can not endure a great man, alone preserves. Un- 
troubled by all which belongs to his limitations, yes, 
even to his sinfulness, the picture of him whom we 
have gratefully known and still revere comes before us. 
We rejoice when his importance is perceived in ever 
wider circles, and the after-effeCts of his activity and 
the work of his life take ever more comprehensive 
shapes. But always it is only the memorial picture of 
our departed friend which abides with us and which 
we enjoy. 

But with Jesus it is otherwise. In the case of other 
friends, death is always felt as the hard blow which we 
must accept without being able to prevent it. We are 
deprived of our best friends, and we reflect that all 
the glory of men, our own not excepted, must sink 
into the grave, which gives nothing back. But it was 
otherwise with Christ. For a short time, indeed, till 
the third day, the disciples thought that everything 
was lost. They had precious recollections of Him, 
but recollections which transfigured not to them His 
pidlure, but only filled them with the deepest sorrow 
over their lost master — not only lost, but one whom 
they themselves had given up. But then a day came 
which no one had expeCted, a day beginning with 
terror, but which turned all their fear into unspeak- 

22 



THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



able joy, and convinced them that nothing was lost ! 
Everything is gained ! The greatest wonder possible, 
forgiveness of all sins, through God's eternal mercy, is 
acquired for us ! Streams of life spring out from Gol- 
gotha through the world ; He, the crucified, has saved 
us ; He died, but His death, of which we are the 
cause, burdens us not, but rather sets us free ; He 
died that we may have forgiveness of our sins ! 

How was this possible ? Whence did the disciples 
know that ? How would they make this clear to the 
world, to the w T hole world, and thus also to us ? How 
would they convince Jews and Gentiles that at all 
times they might find forgiveness only in the blood of 
Christ, the sacrifice of Christ ; that in the blood of 
Christ the forgiveness of all their sins is really to be 
found? Was it possible, perhaps, to convince those 
whose evil work it had been to compass the death of 
Jesus that this death, the death of the most innocent 
of all martyrs, will either burden them forever with 
unpardonable guilt, or save them, if they only remem- 
ber his patient sacrifice, and are led to repentance? 
But no ; this sin was, after all, too great. All blood 
shed unjustly could be forgiven, but not this. The 
offense was so heavy that it always asserted itself 
anew with new power, even tho one had for a time 
given himself up to allaying thoughts. It could not 
be removed by endeavoring to consider the death of 
Jesus under new points of view. The guilt of the dis- 
ciples, their offense at His death on the cross, was still 
greater than the sin of the people who had been per- 
suaded to ask for Barabbas and to rejecft Jesus with 
the cry: "Crucify, crucify Him!" Their sin was 

23 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

greater even than that of the rulers of the people who 
had judged him. They had known Jesus as none of 
the others, and yet they had given him up ! None 
remained faithful to him ; none had confessed : He is 
nevertheless the Messiah ! Tho He is crucified, He is 
the Messiah still ! How, then, should they arrive at 
the thought that not only is the sin of the world for- 
given, but all their sin ? True that Jesus said on the 
evening before His death, when He instituted the 
Lord's Supper: "This is my body, my blood, given 
and shed for you for the remission of sin ' ' ; but did 
this also include that sin which was the crown and 
climax of all the sins that otherwise they had sinned 
against Jesus ? Merely their thoughts could not give 
them the remission of sin. There must be the reality, 
the adlual remission, the very taking away of their 
real guilt, the real not-reckoning of their actual sin. 
How was it possible to obtain the conviction of the 
blotting out of all their guilt through Christ's death 
on the cross, through the blood of the cross ? — a fa<ft 
which we afterward hear testified, nevertheless, from 
their own mouths. 

There can be but one answer : They had expe- 
rienced the forgiveness, this incredible thing, as 
reality. Wonderful it must indeed be, yet is it really 
and actually forgiveness of their sins. For the first 
time something had taken place which had never thus 
before taken place since the foundation of the world. 
Christ Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried, had risen. 
Not like the dead whom He once raised and gave back 
to their own ; He was raised from the dead through 
the glory of the Father. Not by His creative word by 

24 



THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



which He called the world into existence, but by His 
redeeming word. Unto the deepest depth of misery 
and death Christ had become like us, and weak and 
helpless He descended into the world of the dead. 
There it turned out that the cords of death could not 
hold Him. The condition of death was removed by 
the power of God, who is mightier than the power and 
might of all men. It is precisely through the death of 
His Son that God proves Himself the living God, not 
to be prevented by all the devices of men from execut- 
ing His will — above all, His will of love toward 
men. He who was buried left His grave for the sake 
of His brethren, for their benefit. This was the Divine 
justification which fell to His lot. He was right, the 
whole world was wrong. It could not even accom- 
plish what it otherwise does to every one whom it can 
not tolerate — deliver Him to death once for all. Its 
power reached to the cross and the sepulcher, but no 
further. Jesus rose from death, and went to His 
brethren to salute them with His salutation of peace. 
The first impression that His appearance made was 
terror and fright. It could not have been otherwise. 
The women that had come to anoint His body — this 
was indeed the only thing which they could do, and 
was at the same time a sign that they too had lost 
their faith — fled from the grave. They felt as if the 
great day of God's judgment had come over the world. 
The disciples that walked with Him down to Emmaus 
said : ' c Certain women of our company amazed us, 
having been early at the tomb, and when they found 
not His body they came, saying that they had also 
1 seen a vision of angels which said that He was 

25 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

alive.' " But when Jesus Himself appears unto them, 
when He comes to them unimpeded through closed 
doors, a Lord full of power and glory, everything 
changes. 

That the dead should rise up was a common belief 
in Israel. It is thus expressed in the book of the 
prophet Daniel : ' ' Many of them that sleep in the 
dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, 
and some to shame and everlasting contempt." The 
picture which Isaiah used of the deliverance of Israel : 
"Thy dead shall live; awake and sing, ye that dwell 
in the dust," was taken from the language of the 
future reality in which one hoped. EzekiePs vision 
of the field full of bones which became alive again 
through the spirit of the Lord, treated of the same 
deliverance, but was nevertheless only possible to a 
people to whom a future resurrection was so self- 
evident that only supercilious persons like the eminent 
Sadducees could despise it. Now Jesus is said to 
have risen from the dead. Has the day of judgment, 
then — the last day — really come ? They should not be 
surprised, for the sense of their guilt and of their 
being involved in the sin of the whole world is too 
powerful. But the Lord was said to have risen and 
to have appeared unto Simon. But not this alone; He 
was with the disciples, had appeared unto them, while 
the doors were shut. It is not the last day which 
dawned on the Easter morning, but a day of grace, 
first for the disciples, who had Him with them again 
and with Him everything which they ever had be- 
lieved and hoped for, and still more. But Thomas is 
still doubting, for he can not believe that Jesus should 

26 



THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



have returned again from death to those who had de- 
nied and forsaken Him. Resurredtion of the dead, 
yes, this he believes — also that one can actually rise 
from the dead, for he himself had lately seen the re- 
suscitation of Iyazarus. But a resurrection of Jesus, 
which is not the sign of judgment, is too much for 
him. But Jesus, who was crucified, dead, buried, 
and yet risen again, appears to him also, and asks him 
to see and to feel that it is really He, and to say unto 
himself : ' f Now we have Jesus again ! now all is for- 
given ! ' ' For ' ' blessed are they that have not seen and 
yet have believed" — believed as the disciples have 
hitherto believed, and as Peter has confessed it for the 
disciples, and as Jesus always desired it; not the mere 
fac5t of His resurrection, but this fa6t in and with its 
meaning. Otherwise one may indeed perish with and 
without acknowledgment of this fa<?t, or may try to 
persuade himself of the importance of the forgiveness 
without the fadt of the resurre&ion — an impossible 
thing, just as impossible as the indwelling of Christ in 
our hearts, except ' ' the word had become flesh and 
dwelt among us." It means to believe that now 
as never before it has become manifest that ' ' God sent 
not His Son into the world to judge the world, but 
that the world should be saved through Him." Thus 
the disciples experience and learn the adtual forgive- 
ness of sins procured through Christ's innocent and 
patient suffering and death, brought to light by the 
resurrection, appropriated to them or effe<ftuated in 
them through the peace salutation of the risen One. 
Then was confirmed on the day of Pentecost the par- 
doning of the world through the Holy Ghost, who 

27 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

ever since confirms everywhere the word concerning 
Christ, and of our redemption through Him, as Paul, 
Peter, and John unanimously testify. They have not 
lost the Savior, the Redeemer, as they first thought, 
but have Him back and now have Him forever. In 
this nothing is changed by His ascension, for this de- 
parture only means that Jesus must occupy heaven 
and wait at the right hand of God till the Gospel con- 
cerning Him is preached in the whole world. Noth- 
ing and no one can deprive the disciples of their Savior. 
It is God's wondrous grace which gave Him back 
again to them — not too wondrous to him who is ready 
to believe the most wondrous of all : the forgiveness of 
his sins. But to believe this is entirely impossible to 
him whose thinking and imagining and believing is 
utterly bound to the connection of the things in nature 
and history. One can only believe it as a deed 
which God did in connection with another history — 
as it happens otherwise, that very history in which the 
sentence becomes actually operative : ' ' where sin 
abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly. ' ' God 
pardons, Jesus pardons; all sin, all unfaithfulness is 
forgiven. Jesus is risen not only to inform the dis- 
ciples of it, but the forgiveness is thus effectuated in 
men, for whom He died. As Paul says : si Christ was 
delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our 
justification/ ' 

Thus it follows that Christ suffered and died in order 
that the world should not be condemned, which had 
deserved to be condemned for what it had wrought on 
Him, and ever and ever deserves to be condemned. 
Instead, because the world was condemned, He suffered 

28 



THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



death. This was the Father's premeditated counsel 
and will, as Peter expresses it. Jesus, rejected by the 
world, has not forever departed from the world. He is 
rather given back by the Father to our human life and 
thus to the world. In this living Jesus, belonging to 
us, we have the forgiveness of sins for the sake of 
His suffering and death. His suffering and death, 
His crucifixion by the hands of men, took place after 
the foreordained counsel and will of God, and cleanses 
us from all sins, covers all our guilt. For our sake 
it came about, that we might not be condemned. This 
was the price for our deliverance from judgment. 
Thus we are children of God, or acceptable with God, 
and this concerns us, the whole race. "Herein was 
the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent 
His only begotten Son into the world, that we might 
live through Him," saith John. Paul saith: "God 
commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while 
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, 
then, being now justified by His blood, shall we 
be saved from the wrath through Him. For if, while 
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through 
the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, 
shall we be saved by His life*" It is of great signifi- 
cance that we hear and believe the truth of the won- 
drous message, that we know and receive the fa6t, 
apply it to ourselves, and say : We are redeemed, / 
am redeemed; we are pardoned, /am pardoned! Who- 
ever hears this message hears God's words, God's 
voice, which calls him to Jesus. Whoever believes it, 
believes in God and believes in Jesus, who is now 
something to us that no other man can be, something, 

29 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTI ANITY 

indeed, which no brother could be to his brother. For 
He is our redeemer, our deliverer from judgment. 
This no one can be, not even a mother for her child. 
Tho, in fadt, He is our brother, fully like \is, member 
of our communion, yet is He our L,ord, the only One 
in whom we can trust before the face of God. He suf- 
fered because of us, but not only because of us but at 
the same time with us, and not only with us but for 
us in our stead, when judgment was to come upon us. 
What our sin and guilt has imposed upon us to suffer 
He bore ; it was imposed upon Him, and thereby He 
redeemed us from the curse. There shall come a day, 
however, when He will visibly also manifest before all 
the world that He is the Lord over all, over the des- 
tiny of the whole world, unto whom the Father has 
delivered all things. For as He has ascended to 
heaven and gone back to God (who is not only in 
this world, but also beyond it and above it), thus 
Jesus shall some day also return and appear in this 
world as one who is above it, and yet will still be as 
He has ever been, our comrade and brother. This, 
however, will take place only when His command has 
been executed after God's will and His Gospel, the 
Gospel of His cross and resurrection for us, the Gospel 
of its redemption, has been preached to the whole world. 
There is a forgiveness of sins, there is a deliverance 
from judgment and punishment, there is a redemption 
only in Christ's sufferings, death, and resurrection, 
only in the crucified and risen Jesus. He is the 
Christ, the Anointed and Messenger of God, to our 
whole race. 

Thus it happens that those who believe in Him 

30 



THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



acknowledge Him also as their Lord. He is one who 
forever has the destiny of us all in His hand. He has 
redeemed us with His own precious blood and now 
lives and makes intercession for us, and always saves 
those who come to God through Him. But if He 
is the Lord, if He saves those who come to God 
through Him, one understands that His believers 
may pray to Him. We understand that the designa- 
tion, " All-that-call-upon-the-name-of-the- Lord-Jesus- 
Christ, ' ' is the oldest name of those who believe in 
Him as the Messiah. The addressing of prayer to 
Jesus is just the mark that distinguishes belief in the 
Messiah from the unbelief of Israel, and this mark re- 
mains even among the Gentiles for those who are con- 
verted to Christ. But if He is a being to whom one 
prays, tho He is our brother He is nevertheless also 
our God and Lord, for one can pray only to Him who 
is God and Lord. But prayer is made to Him not be- 
cause He became so much more than we, for none can 
become a God; but because He who is and was our 
God and Lord became our brother, entirely man, that 
nothing more may separate us from Him. In His 
love He holds everything, even Himself, for us. He 
became wholly man, flesh, as we are, altho He is God 
over all things, blessed forever! He is not a man that 
has been, but what He was while on earth He is still, 
only not, as He then was, confined to a certain place, but 
now unbounded, everywhere that one prays to Him. 
He belongs to us with a completeness with which no 
other belongs to us. He belongs to us as God only 
belongs to us, and we belong to Him as we belong to 
God, before whom we must appear and before whom 

31 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

we should walk. We stand in communion with Him 
as we stand in communion with God, the Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, and this has not become less 
because it is a communion of love transcending all 
conceivable measure in that He partook of our flesh 
and blood, but rather greater and more significant. 
He, our brother, stands before us as the Son 
of God, whom the Father has chosen as the redeemer 
of the world, with whom the Father shares every thing 
and who shares everything with the Father. He is 
the eternal Son of God, who belongs to God, as the 
son to the father. God and man at the same time ; 
whether we apprehend it or not, He is both. We 
can not think of Him as He lies before us in the 
manger, hangs before us on the cross, stands before 
us as the risen One, otherwise than of One who, 
on the other hand, is God and L,ord over all, to 
whom we pray and in whom we hope. He is 
with the Father now, sitting at the right hand of 
the Majesty, exalted, just as He was with the Father 
in glory before He came into the world to suffer 
and to die for us and because of us. This is the pur- 
port of His own words: ' i I came forth from the Father, 
and am come into the world; again, I leave the world, 
and go to the Father. ' ' What He came to do and 
must do was done and finished when He suffered 
and died for us. Now He is raised and lives forever, 
lives for us, and makes intercession for us. That we 
do not see Him since He ascended is because He has 
patience with the world, which knows Him not yet, 
and which is to know Him through the brethren whom 
He has won. Only when the whole world knows of 

32 



THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



Him and has the offer in Him of redemption through 
His blood, will He come again in His glory and in the 
glory of the Father to unite unto Himself the con- 
gregation of those who believe in Him and to unite 
as well Himself unto them. Then only shall we see 
what we have believed. 

Thus the apostles proclaim Christ, who is our God 
and Lord, and yet our brother, or who is our brother 
and yet at the same time time our God and Lord. Of 
Him Paul says not only: " For ye know the grace of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, that, tho he was rich, yet for 
your sakes He became poor, that ye through His 
poverty might be rich " ; he speaks still more 
plainly: " Who, being in the form of God, counted it 
not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied 
Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in 
the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a 
man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even 
unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore 
also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the 
name which is above every name, that in the name of 
Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and 
things on earth and things under the earth, and that 
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 
to the glory of God the Father." This is the Christ, 
' 'whose are the fathers, and of whom He is, as con- 
cerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. ' ' 
This Christ was indeed born like ourselves, and carried 
the potency of death in His mortal flesh; nevertheless, 
He was not born subject to death by necessity as we 
are, but He was born into the flesh that He might of 
His own will die, and, dying, bring to naught by His 

33 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

death him who had the power of death. In this 
Christ everything has been manifested to us which 
God has to say to us, or ever is or will be for us. 
God's word and the Christ: God's eternal word, 
power, and law of our existence, and He, the eternal 
Son, can not be separated from each other. When I 
think of Him I think of all that God has to say to 
me, and when I think of God's word I think of 
Jesus, the Savior, the Messiah, the Redeemer. He is 
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He " upholds 
all things by the word of His power." He was ere 
the world was, which from the beginning is dependent 
on Him, can only be and exist through Him. At 
length He came — " the word became flesh and dwelt 
among us." In the light which arose to the apostle 
John concerning Him, the days of His earthly life now 
stand before our eyes. What He did and spoke are 
the deeds and words of Him who was chosen from 
eternity to be the Savior of the world. This divinity 
shines through the lowliness of the Son of Man, and 
therefore he saith: (( We beheld His glory, glory as of 
the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and 
truth. ' ' For neither John nor any one else has ever 
perceived how deeply God has humbled Himself, to 
take forever and fully an interest in us and to belong 
to us. 

True, it was only by looking backward from the 
resurrection that the apostles were able to see very 
clearly into this mystery of Christ. Ever and ever 
they had waited until He should accomplish His great 
redeeming deed, and they had not understood why 
(as they thought) He did not do it, but rather suffered 

34 



THE APOSTOLIC MESSAGE 



Himself to be misappreciated, wronged, and oppressed. 
Now they knew a little why His whole life was a con- 
tinued humiliation and what was meant by the words, 
1 c I am meek and lowly in heart. ' ' Now His humil- 
ity, His modesty, His lowliness, His patience in His 
innocent suffering and death were to them the proof of 
His everlasting love as their Savior. He, the great King 
and I^ord of heaven and earth, the risen Prince of Vic- 
tory, having the keys of death and hell, would not 
use this His eternal power and Godhead against us. 
He would not be God against us, but for us. He 
would be all that He is for us, and share with us all 
things. On this account His suffering and death, the 
end of His entire life full of suffering, necessarily be- 
long to His vocation as a Savior. He only could fulfil 
this His calling, the objecft for which He came, till, 
according to the will of His Father, He suffered all 
that the world with its sin could do to the Holy One 
of God. There it was not only proved but visibly 
demonstrated that the sin of the world is no longer 
imputed unto it. God stepped in for Him and justi- 
fied Him by raising Him from the dead, not for con- 
demnation upon the world, but that He should deal 
with it as the everlasting, almighty Savior. For He 
who is to deliver us from death and judgment, and 
not let us perish eternally, must be almighty. But 
He is almighty ; the disciples have learned and now 
they know that what they did not have in Him before, 
they have now, and have forever. 

This is the testimony of the apostles concerning Him. 
This is what they believed who became pioneers in 
Christianity and in the faith of Christ, and in the 

35 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

possession of the Spirit of Christ. How it was possible 
to believe such things, for this they cared not, because 
the most unconceivable fadl which can be imagined 
had been offered and experienced in this announce- 
ment : forgiveness of sins, life and blessedness. 
Whether this is conceivable, whether it can be attained 
by a power of our thoughts or is to be received only 
as a gift of grace — of these questions we shall treat later 
on. Here we are concerned only to state this sequence 
of faith: forgiveness of our sins through the eternal 
Son of God, the man Jesus, who for our sakes and for 
our pardon became flesh. 



36 



Ill 



THE RECORD OF CHRIST ACCORDING TO THE 
SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



/t ix, that we know of Christ rests on the testi- 
*V mony of the apostles. They speak and 
IJSsagl testify of the things which they saw and 
heard, that "we may have fellowship with 
them," and that our "fellowship be with the 
Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." They 
attest it not as disinterested witnesses, but as wit- 
nesses who also understand the importance of all 
which they had experienced, and who wish to help 
us to a like understanding and possession. We have 
no other testimonies concerning Jesus, His earthly 
life, His work, and His suffering. The non-Biblical 
literature of Israel contains no mention of His name, 
but speaks of Him as the " One who was hanged,' ' 
whose ' ( name and memory should be blotted out. ' ' 
Thus we have only the testimonies of believing Israel- 
ites, who, with the whole first community, proved 
their Christianity by remaining in the teaching of the 
apostles. Therefore, our Gospels, in so far as the apos- 
tles themselves had no direct part in their composition, 
are only records of the apostolic testimony to Christ. 
We detect in them also the work of the entire believ- 
ing community, in which the same witness concerning 
Him was always present. We shall not, therefore, 
expect that the picture contained in the Gospel of the 

37 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

earthly life, work, and suffering of Christ should 
essentially differ from that which we have drawn from 
the apostolic epistles. It is possible that this picture, 
or both pictures, may suggest a number of considera- 
tions which we may have to explain. Before this, 
however, we must endeavor accurately to picture to 
ourselves what is recorded of Christ. 

The whole appearance and work of Jesus stand 
clearly before the eyes of the disciples. They know 
what has attracted them to Him, and what has united 
them to Him, and they know it now the better, since 
in consequence of the resurrection not only many things 
that had been riddles have become clear to them, but 
also many a word which they had forgotten, or whose 
depth and power they had hitherto not yet grasped, 
now appears to thern in its entire blessed importance. 
Everything came vividly before their minds again. 
Their reminiscences enriched themselves the more they 
spoke of Him, who was their one and all, and thus 
was fulfilled in them the word which Jesus had spoken 
of the Spirit whom He was to send to them : ' ' The 
same shall bring to your remembrance all that I said 
unto you." The more they became absorbed therein 
the clearer became in them the pidlure of Him to whom 
they were united, whom they had lost and now had 
fourd again forever, even tho they were on earth and 
He at the right hand of God, exalted to participation 
in God's power and majesty. 

Their reminiscences, however, reach further back 
than to the appearance of Jesus. In all Israel there 
are those who are awakened by the appearance of a 
prophet, the sign that God had some special message 

38 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



for His people. Thus, as we read in Amos : ' ' Surely 
the L,ord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His 
secrets unto His servants, the prophets/ ' That John 
the Baptist was a prophet of God was an undoubted 
facft. Nothing entitled him in the conditions then 
present to the conclusion that the time of the fulfil- 
ment of all the promises of God was at hand. One 
thing he could have said without being a prophet : 
1 ' Repent ' ' ; for this every serious Israelite could de- 
mand of every coreligionist — yes, of the whole people. 
But the rationale for this demand, " f or the King- 
dom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, is at hand," 
how establish this ? And how is it that John assumes 
the right not only to symbolize but at the same time 
to warrant the forgiveness of their sins to those who 
repent — an office wholly outside of his regular priestly 
calling and outside of the lawful order ? What gave him 
the right to ask penitents to come to him and be baptized, 
instead of pointing them to the temple and to the 
priests ? How did he know that One was to come after 
him, yes, was already present, who, mightier than 
himself, had already the fan in the hand wdth which 
He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing-floor? And 
yet John's words were believed, not, indeed, by the offi- 
cial representatives of religion — the priests, skeptical 
minded and altogether unbelieving; the performers of 
religion, the * ' respecftable ' ' Pharisees and scribes — but 
by the people, by the great multitude, and most 
readily by those among them who, in their deepest 
soul, longed after the salvation of God. How could 
they believe him? How was it that, as it seems, no 
one publicly appeared against the Baptist ? What recon- 

39 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

ciled the people was the union, in John's message, of 
judgment and grace, the call to repentance founded 
upon the nearness of- God and the fulfilment of His 
promises. The prophet was right with his call and in 
the promise that supplied to the hearer a sufficient 
motive for accepting it. The promise, however, with 
which he reinforced his call to repentance, and which 
he symbolized in baptism, he had by revelation from 
God, for " the word of God came unto John, the son of 
Zacharias, in the wilderness. ' ' 

In the power of this word of God, as a command 
which had been given to Him, as a revelation which 
He had received, He appeared. The law had not ful- 
filled its purpose ; it had not been kept, nor was it 
now kept, not even by those who made it their calling 
to study and to fulfil it. On this account it could 
neither actually, nor even yet symbolically, give what 
it promised. The entire temple service, that service 
for which the Psalmist so heartily longed when he 
desired * ' to behold the beauty of the Lord and to 
inquire in His temple,' ' had become useless. There 
was only one thing which thus far had been Israel's 
consolation: the grace of God, by which Israel had 
been chosen, and on which alone Israel's right rested 
to come to God in repentance and to ask for forgive- 
ness. Was this still valid ? God was not obliged to 
keep His promises after Israel had shown in its long 
history that it did not fulfil the conditions under which 
the promise of the future had been made. Then Israel 
had been the chosen people. Many a time has all 
their hope in the future seemed to be at an end, but 
God's faithfulness had always been greater than the 

40 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



sin of the people, in accordance with the word : 
11 Where sin abounded, grace did abound more ex- 
ceedingly." This and this alone explained the past 
history of Israel, the only people upon earth who 
knew the living God to whom He had made Himself 
specially known. But would the promise still abide 
with them ? During the four hundred years since the 
old inclination toward idolatry had been exterminated, 
the incongruity between the high, special, religious 
privileges of Israel, and the lack of seriousness which 
it should naturally have practised, had become con- 
stantly more glaring. Now the time of the last final 
settlement seemed to have come. 

Then resounded the message of the Baptist. It read 
not : "The end has come, the wrath of God is kindled, 
and will eat His people as the tongue of fire devoureth 
the stubble," but, on the contrary, "The Kingdom, 
the kingly rule of God, the Kingdom of Heaven is at 
hand ! ' ' For this Israel had waited and hoped a long 
time. " How beautiful upon the mountains are the 
feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publish- 
eth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that 
publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Th}^ God 
reigneth ! " Thus Isaiah had prophesied, for God is 
Israel's King, and therefore his Savior. When His 
hour has come He will prove Himself King by 
judging the nations, as He did when He led Israel 
up out of Egypt, and brought it to the place of 
His habitation. The nations which oppress Israel 
experience God's superiority, for Israel's King has 
the mastery over all the world ; He subdues the 
nations and gives liberty and peace to Israel. Zion 

41 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

shall be the center of the world, whither all nations 
shall flow together, to receive there their law. Jeru- 
salem is the city of a great King, the seat of God's 
glory. ' ' Say among the nations, the Lord reigneth : 
He cometh, He cometh to judge the earth. He shall 
judge the world with righteousness, and the people 
with His truth. Iyight is sown for the righteous, and 
gladness for the upright in heart," we read in the 
Psalms. This was the Kingship and Kingdom of God 
which appeared in Nebuchadnezzar's dream as a stone, 
cut out of the mountain without hands, which smote 
the image of the monarchies upon the feet and broke 
them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the 
brass, the silver, and the gold broken in pieces 
together, and became like the chaff of the summer 
threshing-floors ; and the wind carried them away, 
that no place was found for them ; " and the stone 
that smote the image became a great mountain, and 
filled the whole earth." This was the people's hope, 
in this John hoped. That it should come now, that 
all promises of God, the promises of redemption, of 
liberty and peace, should now be fulfilled, this he 
knew through God's revelation. In no place in the 
history of Israel does it become so clear and evident 
as here that there has been vouchsafed a special reve- 
lation. That which was neither indicated by the 
social conditions of the time, nor to be read in 
the closed orbits of the stars, that which not even 
the most penetrating knowledge of God had been able 
to disclose to man, that which was contrary to all the 
expectations of the godly and the ungodly, the just 
and unjust — namely, that now, now, in the time 

42 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



appointed by God, the day of salvation had come 
-this was made known to John. The contrary 
of all that one could expedl has come to pass, and 
the appearance of the Messiah justified the word, 
justified therewith also the deed of the Baptist. To all 
Israel, John was the prophet of God, the voice of the 
preacher in the wilderness, and the wilderness in 
which he appeared characterized him as this prophet. 
All Israel went out unto him, to hear his word, to ac5l 
according to his word in confessing its sins and re- 
ceiving baptism, and to look for the fulfilment of his 
prophecy. For the chief significance of John's mes- 
sage was the promise of deliverance from sin and 
guilt, to attest which was the Baptist's office. 

Thither came Jesus also. John knew Him not, but 
by necessity he must recognize Him, since as prophet 
of God and forerunner of the Messiah he had received 
the Divine vocation of testifying of Him and for Him. 
His relationship to Jesus had afforded him knowledge 
neither of His person nor of His calling. Jesus had 
grown up in Galilee unknown and unrecognized; John, 
in Judea, as the son of a priest and heir of the paternal 
office. When Jesus appeared, John perceived through 
the spirit of prophecy which was in him that this was 
the Messiah to proclaim whom he exists, and in whom 
and through whom the word of prophecy will become 
true. Jesus is the man who is actually to bring forgive- 
ness to Israel, which he, the Baptist, can only symbol- 
ize. Jesus Himself, in His person, adlually is forgive- 
ness. Where Jesus is, there is the forgiveness. On this 
account John refuses to baptize Him, since rather he 
(John) ought to be baptized of Him. But Jesus con- 

43 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

strained him, saying: " For thus it becometh us to 
fulfil all righteousness. ' ' For is the sinners' brother 
appointed to save the sinners ? The Baptist perceives 
that He has not to confess sin, since He came to take it 
away, to forgive it. But precisely because, tho with- 
out sin, He is the brother of sinners, He is able to be 
more than any one of His human brothers in His 
power for the forgiveness of sins — for which, indeed, 
He came. He feels as His whole race feels, or should 
feel ; He longs after that for which all Israel longs ; He 
prays for that which all Israel prays or should pray for, 
and John baptizes Him with the baptism which sym- 
bolizes the granting of His petition that all righteous- 
ness be fulfilled. But now is added to the symbol of 
baptism the Divine reality. The Holy Ghost descends 
upon Jesus, the Father makes Himself known to this 
His Son, with whom He stands and will stand united 
as with no one else, who is to do His work upon earth 
in the power of the Spirit, through whom God is 
united to Him and His work in abiding union. The 
voice of the Father sounds forth, and John hears it : 
' * This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. ' ' 

With this began the way of Jesus. John had desig- 
nated Him as the mightier One who was to come after 
him. The fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly 
cleanse His threshing-floor ; the ax is already laid 
unto the root of the tree, and only waits to be lifted 
up. For among those who had come to Him were 
many to whom His baptism was displeasing, and who 
critically opposed His preaching, because their whole 
tendency referred to the pretended fulfilment of the 
law. John, however, had put himself outside of the 

44 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



law. Would he not thereby destroy Israel's hope? 
Could he be a prophet of God ? The others, however, 
the Sadducees, cared nothing for the fulfilment of the 
promise, but everything for the preservation of their 
position and its priestly privileges; they believed not in 
a working of the living God. To both the Baptist 
had said : ' l Think not to say within yourself, We have 
Abraham to our Father ; for I say unto you that God 
is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abra- 
ham.' ' The promise is fulfilled which is given to 
Abraham and his seed, tho the entire posterity of 
Abraham is not fit to inherit it. But where was the 
judgment? Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the mightier 
One, Jesus the Judge, who should judge His people — 
where was the judgment ? Jesus has not abandoned His 
right of judgment. He will hold it over all nations, 
and that He is able to execute it He proves, as we shall 
see ; but the time for its execution has not yet come. 
The way of the Messiah, the Son of God, who had be- 
come like unto sinners, and the way to the seat of 
judgment were very different, not understood even by 
the Baptist. The first step in this way was a renun- 
ciation without its equal, and yet it was only the first 
step, the beginning. The end was yet a much greater 
renunciation. Moved by the Spirit of God, which 
filled Him, He goes into the wilderness, not to the peo- 
ple for whom He had come into the world. What 
means this? He is baptized; in holy, most serious 
meditation, and in clear perception of His special call- 
ing, He bowed under the hand of the Baptist, and ob- 
tained that which He needed to accomplish in the 
power and name of the Father, the work of His call- 

45 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

ing. Why does He not now go to the people to show 
Himself to them as the Messiah sent by God ? 

He can not and may not begin His work without 
first fighting with him who has been from the begin- 
ning the opponent of God and of His purposes of grace 
with men, and who has his work here on earth — 
Satan. Only after having fought this fight, and hav- 
ing conquered in it, can He come down among men. 
He is summoned by Satan to use His power for His 
own benefit, or to be bought of him by obtaining with- 
out any toil the government of the world, which he 
professes to give to whomsoever he pleases. But He is 
not endowed by God to make use of His power for 
Himself, for His own benefit. It is not God's way that 
He should obtain recognition for Himself by means 
that were worthy only of condemnation. God's way 
is that of humble, perfect faith and obedience to the 
Father, who will show Him not only what he must do, 
but also what he must suffer. The degrading assump- 
tion that He will sell Himself, as if, as a matter of 
course, every man has his price for which he will give 
up God and God's truth and the salvation of his soul 
that he may obtain the world and what it offers, He 
must take like a blow in the face. He can only refuse 
it with words. The significance of it is that He is to 
save, not to destroy, the world. Then Satan leaves 
Him, and Jesus returns to John, who meanwhile had 
become ever sadder and more lonesome. 

John the Baptist sees Jesus walking, and bears wit- 
ness of Him, as John the Evangelist records : ' ' Behold, 
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
world " — a word of faith in which, in one comprehen- 

46 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



sive, prophetic word, he recalls at the same time that 
which he has said of the ' i baptizing in the power of the 
Spirit ' ' in contradistinction to his own baptism, which 
was only a symbol containing the promise of the 
reality, and what the ancient Divine order of the law, 
as well as the established promise of the forgiveness of 
sins, sets forth. As to how this forgiveness takes place 
he says nothing, but as Jesus now again appears for 
the first time after an absence of more than forty days, 
John sees how heavy his calling rests on Him, and 
immediately understands that suffering and sacrifice are 
necessary if He is to save the people. For no one, 
literally no one, has fulfilled the word of the Baptist. 
No one goes and asks Jesus : ' ' Who art Thou ? ' ' 
Still less has any one said : " John has pointed us to 
Thee." On the following day, seeing Jesus walking 
alone, the Baptist repeats his words : ' ' Behold, the 
L,amb of God ! ' ' Then two of his disciples, Andrew 
and John, the son of Zebedee, follow this direction. 
Two — this was the beginning of discipleship with Him 
for whom John came, and for whose sake the whole 
people had come out to him. Two — this was the re- 
sponse with which the prophet of God met ; as he said 
later on : ' ' In the midst of you standeth one whom 
ye know not." But these two, convinced from the 
beginning by the words of the Baptist, now also further 
convince themselves, by their own experience, that 
Jesus is indeed the promised Messiah. That which 
induced them and the others who through them came 
to Jesus — Simon, whom Jesus called Peter, their friend 
Philip, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee — to believe on 
Him, to know Him as the Messiah, and to follow Him 

47 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

in order to see His power and glory, was the very thing 
which John had testified unto them. John had spoken 
of their sin, had demanded repentance and co?ifession 
of sins. Jesus makes them understand His deep in- 
sight into their sin, and to know that it is because 
of their sin He has come into the world. He felt the 
groaning of Simon under the power of his sin, and 
gave him a name which promised to him a future, 
entirely different from that v/hich he could expedl, con- 
sidering the kind of man he was by nature. He had 
noted Nathanael's prayer and confession of sin, the like 
of w r hich no one had ever seen or heard from Peter. 
Thus Jesus announced to them the grace of God, while 
he showed them also fully and unreservedly the sig- 
nificance of their sin. They believed, moreover, altho 
every appearance was against it, that He was the royal 
deliverer and peace-bringer of Israel. They believed 
He would prove Himself such by His power, and so 
they followed Him, and waited for still greater things 
they wished and expedled to see. That Jesus was 
righteous, and, indeed, He alone, they had now ex- 
perienced for themselves. Sin and grace have never 
before become manifest as they are now shown. In 
the way which He went they experienced so much of 
His Messiahship that they attached themselves to Him 
confidently, altho this way was provisionally only one 
of humble renunciation. Jesus indeed could not come 
before the people with the claim : ' ' 1 am the Messiah ! ' ' 
Either none would have believed it, or they would 
have hailed Him, lifted Him on the shield, and made 
Him king, without even thinking in the least that not 
the sin and violence of others but our own sin is our 

48 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



reproach. In any case, nothing else would have been 
left for Jesus but to assert Himself and speak God's 
truth with all His might against His people. On His 
own account He had to leave it to the holiness of the 
cause which He represented, and to the activity which 
He should unfold, to make Himself rightly known. 

The cause which He represented was nothing else 
than that which John had announced as being at hand, 
a wondrous gift of grace — the Kingdom of God. This 
is the tenor of all Divine promises and all gifts of sal- 
vation which God prepared for men from eternity. 
It is the Kingdom in which God rules, and men 
under the protection of His might and love have 
peace, and in peace enjoy freedom from all misery and 
distress. In this Kingdom the word concerning Israel's 
redemption and Jerusalem's deliverance is fulfilled : 
"The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick ; the people 
that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity." 
It is the Kingdom of the Father, for which Israel has 
longed in its deepest distress, in the most grievous 
sighing after deliverance, in its darkest nights. This 
name Jesus takes up when repeating the sermon of the 
Baptist. He calls God Father, as the Baptist has never 
called Him. But He did not thereby proclaim new 
knowledge of God which had come to Him, or had 
been discovered by Him, or had been exclusively given 
to Him, in opposition to the Israelitish Old Testament 
knowledge of God. It has been said that in its narrow- 
ness and limitation the Old Testament idea is false 
and can not satisfy Israel, because it requires of us to 
think of God as an austere, inexorable judge. The 
contrast has been drawn between the Old Testament; 

49 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

use of this name Father and the sense in which Jesus 
used it (compare Isaiah lxiii : 16 ; Jeremiah iii : 4, 
19 ; xxxi : 9 ; Malachi i : 6 ; ii : 10 ; Deuteronomy 
xxxii : 6), but there is not a single passage in the 
discourses of Jesus to warrant the theory current in 
our day that such a contrast exists. Jesus called God 
Father because He did the deed of redemption for 
which Israel waited. He is the Father of Jesus be- 
cause Jesus is His Son, whom He has chosen to exe- 
cute His redemption ; He is Israel's Father because 
Israel is the obje<5t of redemption promised, and He is 
the Father of all those to whom He sends the redemp- 
tion. With the redemption He proves that He has 
not forgotten His people, but interests Himself in 
them, shows His power and establishes His Kingdom 
among them. God's Kingdom and God's name of 
Father belong together. God's Kingdom takes its 
name not from the obedience of the citizens of a king- 
dom, but from God's deed of redemption. God's 
name of Father reveals the ground of compassionate 
love, and shows us why God interests Himself in those 
whom He has chosen for His children. He made this 
meaning known to Pharaoh through Moses, when He 
said : " Israel is my first-born son." 

In this connexion of God's name of Father with 
the proclamation of God's Kingdom, we see the first 
difference between the proclamation of Jesus and that 
of the Baptist. This at first tells us nothing essen- 
tially new. It emphasizes the fa<£t that the promise to 
Israel is about to be fulfilled — indeed, is now already 
in process of fulfilment. Nevertheless, one can but feel 
that there is a peculiar meaning in which Jesus says 

50 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 

Father in addressing God or in speaking of God. 
He speaks of Him as Father, who has called Him- 
self Israel's Father, and who has called Israel His son, 
His first-born, and whom Israel also addresses as 
Father in its devoutest prayers. Jesus says " the 
Father," "your Father," "My Father," but never 
"our Father," except where he tells the disciples how 
to pray. The actual fulfilment of the promise is con- 
nected with Jesus; where Jesus is and only where He 
is there is God's Kingdom ; therefore He says Father as 
no one else can say it. But this changes nothing in the 
idea of the Kingdom of God, except that this is, as now, 
in the process of final fulfilment of all the promises of 
God. The present does not look like the fulfilment of 
the promise, and yet it would be seen in the final end 
of His mission on earth that something more glorious 
than the promise has come. In the mouth of Jesus 
also the Kingdom of God means that condition of Israel 
relative to the world in which all promises are or have 
been fulfilled. In this Kingdom Israel enjoys forgive- 
ness of sins, suspension of judgment, and relief from 
distress under which it groans, and thence eternal 
peace. On this account the Kingdom of God or the 
establishment of God's government is brought about 
by a great redemptive deed, by the practical proof of 
the power and love of God for the redemption of His 
people. 

But where is, where remains, this redemptive deed ? 
Is it, perhaps, to consist only in new and different 
thoughts and aspedls, through which Jesus taught His 
disciples to look upon life and the course of events in 
the world? But aspects are not powers, thoughts 

51 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

bring no liberty and peace, and do not take away the 
heavy and painful reality of God's judgment resting 
upon Israel. Jesus had appeared, and Jesus then rather 
calls attention to Himself, tells them that He will some 
day come to judge the earth and to save His own, and 
that whoever comes to Him and abides by Him is not 
only sure of his future, but shall also have peace in 
the present. We have but to recall the parable of the 
widow and the unrighteous judge, and the discourses 
of the L,ord concerning His coming. These He seals 
and endorses in the last evening of His ministry at the 
institution of the sacraments. These are words that 
He spoke at the end of His career. He had, indeed, 
many occasions to speak otherwise if He had, through 
His experience, come to an idea of the Kingdom of God 
different from that which He had originally — the idea 
preached by John the Baptist. But there has been no 
change. The Kingdom of God, for which He came, 
is the same at the end of His career as in the begin- 
ning. It represents in His earlier as in His later 
teaching a world-condition brought about by the right- 
eous judgment of God the Father, in which His own 
have peace and freedom from all distress through the 
forgiveness of their sins. Jesus proclaims this King- 
dom, He brings in this Kingdom; where He is, there is 
this Kingdom. It is appointed for the poor, who in the 
inmost depths of their being suffer under their poverty, 
and are oppressed and pained by those who have the 
power in the world. For the sufferers, for the mourn- 
ers, for those who can only tell God their sorrow and 
wait for God's righteous judgment on their own be- 
half, for such is this Kingdom appointed, for such it 

52 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



exists. But where is it ? The Baptist is in prison, and 
waits in vain to be the first to whom the Messiah should 
reveal His full power. Jesus points him to the signs of 
His Messiahship : the miracles which He performs, 
the poor who are evangelized, that the fulfilment of 
the promise is preached to the poor — but where is 
the fulfilment ? Jesus adds : ' ' And blessed is he, 
whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me." 
It is as if He bade him suffer and die, looking for the 
salvation of God, like Jacob. It is as if He had said : 
" I am the Messiah, of this you can be certain, and in 
this certainty you can suffer and die. ' ' Has He there- 
with, then, transferred the Kingdom of God, the King- 
dom of Heaven, from this world to the other? Hardly, 
for He teaches His disciples to say: "Thy Kingdom 
come " and " deliver us from evil." To the Kingdom 
of God belongs, indeed, the future, the new world, 
the new heaven, the new earth; but the present also 
belongs to it. But in the present the Kingdom is still 
in distress. He, the Messiah himself, suffers under 
the misconception of men who turn away from all 
Divine things. On this account the conditions then 
present did not look like God's Kingdom because 
men opposed the government of God, and therefore 
opposed Jesus. 

Here and there were a few who knew Him as the 
God-sent Messiah, and followed Him or believed in Him. 
Not only did a vast contrast appear between the claim 
which He makes or which is made for Him and the 
actual appearance of the world, between the hoped- 
for and desired Kingdom of God and the poor reality 
which men saw, but even His word that He speaks 

5a 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

is too serious, the salvation-message which He brings 
does not suit those who after their own imagination 
have made a pidture of the future — the scribes, 
Pharisees, priests, and elders of the people. The mes- 
sage indeed appears to confirm their hopes in promising 
freedom from all affliction and evil, but these hopes 
are to be confirmed through the forgiveness of their 
sins. This forgiveness, as Jesus brings it and prac- 
tises it, they do not want. That we need forgiveness 
may be admitted. But they thought themselves to 
have a claim to forgiveness through their descent from 
Abraham and as belonging to the chosen people of 
God. As it is among us to-day, they relied upon 
their good works, fastings, alms, as merits which 
they believed they had acquired and would acquire. 
On this account Jesus remains alone, and lonely walks 
His way ; the cities of Chorazim, Bethsaida, and 
Capernaum He must rebuke, because, exalted unto 
heaven by His presence, they would not believe. No 
one has known Him, no one knows the Father, who 
speaks through Him and in Him, and is present with 
Him. This is the lonely condition of Him who came 
to fulfil all promises of God. Nevertheless, He per- 
sists in His invitation to all that labor and are heavy 
laden, that He may quicken them and give rest unto 
their souls. He sends His disciples into all cities and 
markets of the land to proclaim the message of the 
Kingdom of God — in vain! He performs miracles 
more abundantly than any one had ever done before 
Him — not merely for the sake of men, tho they were 
miracles of Divine compassion. Through them is re- 
vealed besides that He is the master over the mighty, 

54 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



supreme in power over the evil one. This, too, is in 
vain. Nevertheless, He persists in this work of 
bringing in the Kingdom of God, which, however, 
because of the evil doing of men, is far different from 
the Kingdom that had been commonly expected. He 
speaks of it only in parables which show the condem- 
nation of those who know Him not and will not 
know Him — a thought at first incomprehensible 
even to His disciples. For in all parables He 
speaks of those points of the Kingdom of God of 
which they did not clearly think. Thus He pa- 
tiently explains to them in the parable of the sower 
how thrice the word fails, and only in a fourth 
part of the field, which is the world, bears fruit ; in 
the parable of the tares among the wheat that are not 
now to be rooted up, how the children of evil are to 
remain unto the end of days for the sake of the chil- 
dren of the Kingdom. Jesus is present, He is the 
Messiah, and He says of Himself: ' ' But if I by the 
power of the Spirit of God cast out the devils, then 
the Kingdom of God has come without your perceiving 
it. ' ' He can only testify thereof and pardon the sins of 
those who believe in Him. He will not and can not 
yet begin judgment and establish the glory of the 
Kingdom ; this will come later on. First must all be 
accomplished upon Him that is hidden in the human 
heart of enmity — enmity against God and God's works. 
Jesus is on His last journey to Jerusalem in the 
parts of Caesarea Philippi in the extremest northern 
border of the country. True, they speak of Him every- 
where in the holy land, but He is not regarded as the 
Messiah. It is questionable, on the other hand, whether 

55 



THK ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

even His disciples are firm and clear in their belief in 
Him, and have been so convinced of His Messiahship that 
they will stand firmly for Him in the face of the whole 
people. They have to acknowledge to themselves 
that everywhere indeed great things, yea, wonderful 
things, are spoken of Him. The main thing, however, 
is not mentioned. It is not yet known, they do not 
understand, that He is the Messiah, chosen of God to 
be the King of His Kingdom. This expelled One is 
called Messiah or Anointed, King by the grace of God. 
"And ye? " Jesus asks them. " Who say ye that I 
am ? Men call me the Son of Man, because they can 
not know the Son of Man as the Messiah, the Son of 
God, the King anointed of God." Thereupon Peter 
makes the confession in the name of all disciples : 
"Thou art the Messiah of God," or "Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the Living God. ' ' Hearing this, Jesus 
promises that upon this, the foundation of this con- 
fession, He will build His Church, the Church of the 
redeemed, that congregation which He had already in 
view when He said to His disciples : " Fear not, little 
flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you 
the Kingdom." Nothing can be said against the 
authenticity of this word that prophecies the building 
of His Church, against which the gates of Hades shall 
not prevail. Israel was accustomed to call itself the 
Church of God, and had waited until the Kingdom 
should be appointed to it. 

After the belief of the disciples had thus been ex- 
pressed over against the disbelief of the whole peo- 
ple, Jesus now clearly and unequivocally points onward 
to His end. As the records show, He had from the 

56 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



beginning His death before Him. In the face of death 
He has preached not only the kingdom of God, as the 
fulfilment of all prophecies, but He has also attested it 
as both present and future. How this was possible, 
what connection there is between the two fadls, is a 
matter for consideration by itself. But the fa<fl that 
Jesus, according to our records, from the beginning 
saw both these fadts together must be acknowledged. 
Rejection and deliverance to death awaited Him who 
had challenged the confession that He is the Messiah, 
the King of the Kingdom of God. From the begin- 
ning He had hinted at and pointed to it — now He ex- 
pressed it openly and without disguise. The dis- 
ciples do not comprehend it. Again it is Peter who 
takes the L,ord apart and asks Him to spare Himself, 
that this thing may not happen to him. For this 
Peter is rebuked by Jesus : ' ' Get thee behind Me, 
Satan, for thou mindest not the things of God, but the 
things of men." Two of the disciples, the sons of 
Zebedee, believe in His Messiahship, and are ready, 
as they think, and in the sense in which they under- 
stand it, to drink the cup that He was about to 
drink, and be baptized with the baptism that He is 
baptized with. They know that He must suffer and be 
deeply baptized into the floods of hatred, but they can 
and will suffer with Him, because the Kingdom never- 
theless shall come; they wish, when it is established, to 
be nearest to Him. Jesus refuses their request, and 
at the same time addresses Himself to the other dis- 
ciples, of whom, finally, each wished to be the first, 
and says unto them : * ' The rulers of the Gentiles 
lord it over them, and their great ones exercise au- 

57 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

thority over them. Not so shall it be among you. 
Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
many." They understand Him not. He also speaks 
of the future, saying that the Gospel of the Kingdom 
must be preached in the whole world for a testimony 
unto all nations, and when this is done He shall come 
in the glory of the Father, who has chosen and re- 
deemed His people, and all holy angels with Him. 
This the disciples readily believe ; but that death 
should intervene, this they did not understand. He had 
said to Israel : ' ' The Kingdom of God shall be taken 
away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing 
forth the fruits thereof. ' ' Israel thinks this impossi- 
ble. Finally comes the last evening on which once 
more He celebrates with the disciples and they with 
Him in one and the same ceremony — the Passover at 
Jerusalem, the memorial Supper of the redemption 
from Egypt, and the promised, long-desired Messianic 
redemption through the revelation of the Kingdom of 
God. The disciples expecl at this time the revelation 
of His glory, the great Messiah-deed of Israel's re- 
demption. Jesus is prepared for death. He gives 
them bread and wine at the Passover meal, and says : 
"This is My body, My blood, given and shed for you 
for the remission of sins. ' ' They understand Him not. 
But this they understand, that He will appoint unto 
them a Kingdom, even as His Father appointed unto 
Him. But they did not comprehend His word : "All 
shall be offended in Me this night," and they assure 
Him, Peter first of all, of their unshaken fidelity. 
But — they keep not the faith, Judas betrays Him, 
58 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



Peter denies Him, all the others forsake Him and run 
away, and thus rejected by the people, sentenced by 
the authorities, given up by the Gentiles, forsaken by 
His own, goes on His way to the cross. 

No man expected anything more of Him. There 
is but one here who understands the wrong that is 
being perpetrated, a being belonging to the refuse of 
the world, who had seen the wrongs that men can do 
in cold blood. He is himself unrighteous, yet had he 
the right he would arrange the whole world before 
God's tribunal. But he is not right himself. He is a 
thief, himself condemed. Jesus alone is right, the only 
righteous one of all. He is the only One who has 
authority before God, and whoever will be saved from 
condemnation must take refuge with Him. Knowing 
this, this man confesses that he was receiving the due 
reward of his deeds, and prays: " L,ord, remember me 
when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom/ ' Jesus, how- 
ever, accepts this petition, and promises him that he 
shall be with Him that very day in Paradise. Thus, 
dying, He endorses still the Gospel which He has 
preached. But when He knew that all things were 
finished, that the Scripture might be accomplished, He 
said, " I thirst/ ' and one of the soldiers filled a sponge 
with vinegar and put it to His mouth. When He 
therefore had received the vinegar, He said: "It is 
finished! and He bowed the head and gave up His 
spirit. ,, 

Is this all ? Jesus had proclaimed great things, the 
Kingdom of God — not merely a Kingdom in which 
those meet who intend to do the will of God, and who 
suffer God to be their Lord whose motives and objects 

59 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

should also be the chief motives and objects of their 
life, but still more significantly a Kingdom which has 
its name from the fadl that God establishes it. It is 
God who shows in it His power — the power in very 
deed to redeem His own. It is God who through this 
Kingdom, in the omnipotence of His love, fulfils His 
promises, not for and on the righteous, not for those 
who are whole, but for and on sinners, for and on such 
sinners as she was of whom it is recorded that He knew 
not ' ' who and what manner of woman this is which 
toucheth Him." For them Jesus was sent from God, 
for them He brings the grace of God, which they 
need; such as these will He comfort and revive. To 
Him should they come, in Him should they believe. 
He is not sub/eft y bat objett of religion. 

Has He the right ? Are these statements of Him 
still true ? Or must we first purge the accounts of Him 
from every accessory of Jewish particularism, of Jew- 
ish theology, of Jewish presumption and elements of 
narrowness in their knowledge of nature ? He said 
great things about the inestimable worth of a human 
soul, indeed, not merely in the figurative discourses 
upon the birds of the heaven, the lilies of the field, 
the hairs on our head, but even more pointedly in the 
parables of the lost sheep, the lost piece of silver, and 
the prodigal son. These were sinners' souls, in whom 
Jesus had an interest, as He shows when He interests 
Himself in the paralytic and the publican. It was not, 
as Wellhausen says, that ' ' His predilection for sinners 
sometimes seems to go too far, but as to this one must 
always take into account His opposition to the Phari- 
sees. ' ' Rather what Paul attests later is true : ' i Where 

60 



THE SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT 



sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly." 
Jesus has proved this, and thus made Himself the 
center of attraction to sinners to assure the most miser- 
able of the miserable that the Kingdom of God is at 
hand, and that He is the King of this Kingdom, chosen 
of God. 

Now He had gone. Where now abides and remains 
the Kingdom of God ? Does it not seem as if we were 
obliged to distinguish at least the transient and the en- 
during in the accounts concerning Jesus ? But before 
we proceed to that we must take into consideration 
another record of Jesus' career — the Gospel according 
to John, whose narrative is or seems to be so extremely 
different from that of the synoptic Gospels that we are 
obliged to give it our attention. 



61 



IV 

THE JOHANNEAN ACCOUNT 



\AT K are now to consider the relation of the ac- 
** counts of Christ in John with the synoptists. 

E@aol In the first place, it must be admitted that 
an essential part of the difference arises 
from the different purpose of the Gospel. The Johan- 
nean Gospel is intended for the congregation of be- 
lievers, who already know and follow Christ, and is 
meant to strengthen, confirm, and enrich them, and 
to develop their faith more fully. The synoptic Gos- 
pels, on the other hand, give us that record of Jesus* 
career and history as it was again and again reported 
in connexion with the missionary preaching, and as it 
very soon took, as to the main parts, a relatively fixed 
form. Matthew gives the apology of Jesus' Messiah- 
ship over against Judaism ; Luke a record of the his- 
tory of Jesus, and the preaching of the Gospel set 
down for the enlightenment of a prominent heathen 
interested in Christianity ; while Mark has put to- 
gether what he heard again and again in the mission- 
ary preaching. We may thus understand how it is 
that we meet a difference between the Johannean ac- 
count and that of the synoptists, which is similar to the 
difference that appears between the apostolic account 
and that of Christ Himself. Only incidentally do the 
apostles speak of the Kingdom of God, with the idea 

62 



THE JOHANNEAN ACCOUNT 

of which, however, they are well acquainted. Instead 
of it they proclaim the King of this Kingdom, Jesus 
the Messiah, the Anointed. They speak of all the 
good and great things which we owe to Him. For 
after the resurredlion, through which God has certified 
His claims, His person and the Kinghood of His per- 
son stand in the foreground ; with His person the 
whole matter is given: Jesus the King or the Anointed 
saves, judges, gives eternal life; and thus the Kingdom 
of God exists wherever the Kinghood of Jesus is be- 
lieved and experienced. However, the more John 
reckons with the fadl of the misconduct of Israel, or, 
as he always says, of the Jews, the greater seems to 
him the necessity of emphasizing the facft that Jesus 
is the Christ, the Son of God. 

Further, according to Matthew, when Christ speaks 
of the Kingdom of God, He uses the customary Jew- 
ish expression, Kingdom of Heaven, altho Matthew 
also uses the expression, Kingdom of God. According 
to Luke and Mark, Jesus uses only the expression, 
Kingdom of God. The message of the Kingdom of 
God, however, forms the true purport of the message 
of Jesus. Even according to John, Jesus spoke of the 
Kingdom of God, as the conversation with Nicodemus 
proves, recalling that which John and Jesus have previ- 
ously attested. This also accords with the word of 
Jesus to Pilate at the end of His career. To Pilate's 
question, ' ' Art Thou the King of the Jews ? ' ' He an- 
swers, " My Kingdom is not of this world ; thou sayest 
that I am a king. ' ' Why does not John make Jesus also 
announce the Kingdom of God, since he knows the 
facft that Jesus preached the Kingdom of God ? But, 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

does John mean to give a full survey of the career of 
Jesus ? L,et us recollecft that there are presented to us 
only single, isolated extracts from that which has been 
called the didadlic life of Jesus. In the second chapter 
we have the miracle at the marriage in Cana, the cleans- 
ing of the temple, and the short mention of the faith 
which Jesus found in Jerusalem, on which, however, 
He did not much rely ; in the third chapter there is 
the conversation with Nicodemus ; in the fourth the 
motive for Jesus' journey to Galilee, the conversation 
with the Samaritan woman, the healing of the ruler's 
son, but nothing farther of Jesus' activity in Galilee. 
And yet John knows of this, for, after he nar- 
rated in the fifth chapter the healing of the sick by 
the pool of Bethesda, and the discourse with the Jews 
following the same, he speaks in the sixth chapter of 
the feeding of the five thousand near the sea of Gennes- 
aret, which was the cause for the great discourse on 
the eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of the 
Son of Man — a sermon recorded by John only. In the 
seventh chapter Jesus speaks at the feast of tabernacles, 
and in the eighth chapter calls Himself the light of 
the world. To this should be joined the discourse of 
Jesus upon discipleship, and the account in which the 
unbelieving Jews accuse Him of having a devil. In 
the ninth chapter we have the healing of the man born 
blind ; in the tenth Jesus speaks of Himself as the 
good shepherd ; in the eleventh occurs the raising of 
lyazarus ; in the twelfth the anointing in Bethany and 
the entrance into Jerusalem ; in the thirteenth the 
beginning of the last days, the washing of the disciples' 
feet, the betrayal of Judas, and from that on the pecul- 
64 



THE JOHANNEAN ACCOUNT 

iar discourses of Jesus with His disciples, the high- 
priestly prayer, and the history of the passion. Thus 
to the twelfth chapter we have only isolated extracts 
from Jesus' career, which are not even intended to 
make the impression of a report of His whole life and 
teaching. For John, as we derive from a number of 
individual features of his Gospel, presupposes among 
his readers an acquaintance not only with the history 
of Jesus, but with the synoptic narrative of the same, 
and his purpose is not to supplement this, but to 
record that which in his very intimate relation to Jesus 
had become important to him as the main question 
and report its decision — the question, namely : Is 
Jesus the Messiah? And why would the Jews not 
believe this ? On this account John records only the 
discourses bearing upon a decision of these questions. 
Beside this, he gives us some of the familiar dis- 
courses of Jesus with His disciples, as the farewell 
discourses. He shows in this that he has retained the 
ear and heart of the disciple whom Jesus loved, and 
would not keep from the Church his recollections con- 
nected with the most serious, and, at the same time, 
most intimate hours with the Master. 

We thus see in the discourses of Jesus that John's 
Gospel concerns not the Kingdom of God, but Christ 
Himself as the Messiah or the Son of God. This is 
exadlly the difference which distinguishes the apostolic 
accounts from the sayings of Jesus Himself, while at 
the same time we note that there is perfect agree- 
ment with the synoptists in that Jesus is called in 
the same sense as in the synoptics the Son of God, 
and God is called in the same sense the Father, your 

65 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 



Father, my Father. Since Jesus spoke of the King- 
dom of God, the question as to His relation to this 
Kingdom, the question as to His Messiahship, had to 
arise. Is He the Messiah ? Is He the Son of God ? 
For the question as to the Messiahship was the ques- 
tion as to the Sonship of God. If it could be proved 
to Jesus that in this very relation He is not the Son 
of God, that He is in opposition to the Father, the 
question as to His Messiahship was decided. Then 
say what He pleased, do miracles as many and as 
great as He pleased, He was not the Messiah. With 
this decisive question alone the Johannean Gospel 
is concerned. On this account the evangelist records 
events and discourses which refer only to this, and 
which to this point are most exactly characteristic. 
Such are Jesus' discourses with Nicodemus and with 
the Samaritan woman. 

To John the designation Son of God in the synop- 
tics is nothing else than the designation of the Mes- 
siah expressing the unique relation to Him of God, 
who had chosen Him to be His Anointed, the King of 
His Kingdom. God's Son was to be Israel's King. 
This He had never completely been. Since the destruc- 
tion of the Jewish kingdom Israel has waited for 
Him, who forever was to be the royal Son of God, 
who should establish forever the Kingdom of God, 
forever be the salvation of His people, and thereby of 
the whole world. True, God had once said : " Israel 
is my son, my first-born ; out of Egypt did I call my 
son," and in its darkest hour, in its most fervent 
prayers for the promised deliverance, Israel had 
addressed God as its Father, as may be seen from the 



THE JOHANNKAN ACCOUNT 

well-known passage in the Book of Wisdom (II. , \off.\ 
V. , i ff. ). But they were not used to speak of God as 
the Father, but only to pray to Him thus, and Israel 
called not itself Son of God, still less the Son of God. 
This predicate they uttered only to the Messiah, whose 
relation to God was to transcend every human measure. 
Now Jesus came and spoke not only of God as the 
Father — this they had before understood and let it 
pass. The Jews said of themselves, in one of these 
controversial discourses with Jesus : ' ' We were not 
born of fornication ; we have one Father, even God." 
Jesus, however, spoke of God as His Father, as no one 
otherwise did; He referred His work to His Father — 
1 l My Father worketh even until now, and I work." 
Was this not blasphemy ? He, a man of man, a son 
of man, made Himself equal with God, and gave to 
the name of Father and to the name of Son a mean- 
ing which no one could understand or acknowledge 
without acknowledging, at the same time, the Messiah- 
ship of Jesus. For only an understanding of the 
reality of the Messiah could unfold the whole meaning 
and purport of the designation: "The Son of God." 
Shall this Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary, be the 
Son of God ? A son of man the Son of God ? Never ! 
And since He is not this, He is also not the Messiah ; 
He is also not the light of the world, the bread of life, 
which came down out of heaven and gives life to the 
world ! 

This, however, is exadlly the same meaning in 
which the record of the synoptic Gospels speaks, not 
only of the fathership of God, but also of the unique 
Divine sonship of Christ. Jesus says : " I thank Thee, 

67 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

O Father, L,ord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst 
hide these things from the wise and understanding, 
and didst reveal them unto babes; yea, Father, for so 
it was well-pleasing in Thy sight. All things have 
been delivered unto me of my Father ; and no one 
knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any 
know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever 
the Son willeth to reveal Him." In the same sense 
Jesus thinks of His Divine sonship, where He experts 
and receives from His disciples the confession: " Thou 
(the Son of Man, whom men regard as their equal and 
consequently not as the Messiah), Thou art the Mes- 
siah, the Son of the Living God." In the same sense 
He says on this occasion to Peter : ( ' Flesh and blood 
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which 
is in heaven." It is the same idea of the Son of God, 
the beloved or chosen Son, that is meant at the bap- 
tism and at the transfiguration of Jesus, at His temp- 
tation and condemnation, and this is also conveyed in 
the idea of the fathership of God in its connection 
with the Kingdom of God and the relation of Jesus 
to it. 

Then remains for the Gospel of John the pecu- 
liarity of representing Jesus as One who, in an eternal 
manner, was God and became man. John's history is 
the shadowing forth of Him in whom from eternity 
everything unites what God has to tell to the world. 
On this account He is called the Word, and, as this 
Word, He is God. For everything which God is and 
will be for us He is, and everything is comprised and 
terminated in Him. In this designation there is to be 
found no trace whatever of Philonian and Alexandrian 

C8 



THE JOHANNEAN ACCOUNT 

religious philosophy, and the later discussions of Greek 
theology on the ' ' L,ogos ' ' only wrongfully start from 
this assumption. He, the Word, which God has 
spoken to us and given unto us, the Word which was 
with God, and was and is God Himself — He became 
flesh, became what we are and like unto us (the very 
reverse of that what He was and is from the begin- 
ning), and dwelt among us. And as God in Him 
made Himself actually present with us, we beheld His 
glory — glory as of the only begotten from the Father, 
full of grace and truth. It is His history which came 
to pass, and from which the Evangelist brings out the 
very traits in which this, His Divine sonship, is pre- 
served, tho misjudged, opposed, and rejedled. He, 
the Messiah, who saved us from all sins, is, indeed, 
apprehended by His disciples and by a few lost people, 
like the Samaritan woman; but, from the beginning, 
He is not received by His people. He emphasizes that 
He is sent by the Father, not to judge and to punish 
the world, but to save it, and that faith in Him is the 
salvation of men. This way they will not like, be- 
cause they can not bear the light, which through this 
mercy of God falls from Jesus upon their way. Hence 
the steady opposition to Jesus. It is this opposition 
chiefly that raises the question whether He is the Son 
of God, the Messiah. It is this test to which He 
Himself appeals. He who hears and knows the 
Father, and then sees when, where, and how Jesus 
speaks and works, must perceive also that Jesus is the 
Son of the Father, because He does and speaks 
nothing except that which He sees the Father do, or 
which the Father shows unto Him and inspires Him 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

to do and to say. Whoever is concerned to do God's 
will, where Jesus stands before Him and lays His 
claim to Him, shall know of the teaching whether it 
be of God, whether it brings the lost to God, whether 
it unites the soul with God or not. Because this is 
the sufficient test that Jesus seeks, He judges not — 
will only judge when the final day has come. Till 
then He bears and suffers whatever disbelief causes 
Him to bear. He plainly declares what kind of faith 
He seeks, a faith which unreservedly reconciles itself 
to His humble appearance, and in this very aspedt of 
His lowliness finds the spirit of redemption. But His 
way becomes lonely and ever lonelier. He speaks of 
eternal life which He gives, and which those who be- 
lieve in Him may find and have — the same gift which the 
synoptists name as the gift of salvation, for the sake 
of which the Kingdom of God is to be desired. But, 
as He is not understood and finds no faith when He 
speaks of the Father, so He also gains no credence for 
this promise of eternal life. He presents Himself to 
the people as the good shepherd, of whom the promise 
has spoken, yet it is as the shepherd who lays down His 
own life in order to save the flock. This does not fit 
with the pidlure which men cherished of a Messiah 
coming in power, who with His power, as at one stroke, 
makes an end to all oppression. Therefore, this 
figure also is not understood and the representation is 
not believed. None abides with Him except the few 
disciples whom He has found. To them He now 
promises the fruit of His life and suffering — the Holy 
Ghost — as in that promise of prayer recorded in the 
synoptics. The day is to come on which they shall 

70 



THE JOHANNEAN ACCOUNT 

not only fully understand Him but know Him wholly, 
and in Him shall have all that they need. ' * In the 
world ye have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I 
have overcome the world. ' ' But even the disciples as 
yet did not understand Him wholly and fully. They 
did not understand the word : ' ' I came out from the 
Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave 
the world, and go unto the Father." They do not 
yet comprehend the true tenor of His high-priestly 
prayer: " O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own 
self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the 
world was." But they understood how He said: 
" And this is life eternal; that they should know Thee, 
the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, 
even Jesus Christ." Only after they had experienced 
it all, after He had risen, and after the Comforter, the 
Holy Ghost, had illuminated them, did everything 
come plain to them. It became evident to them at 
length that Jesus had to descend into the deepest 
depth, and that this was the way in which He, the 
Father's only begotten Son, come down to us, be- 
trayed, denied, forsaken even by His disciples, has 
proved Himself our Savior, Helper, King, and I^ord 
of God's Kingdom. Now His word holds good which 
He said of His death: " And I, if I be lifted up from 
the earth, will draw all men unto Myself." He is the 
Messiah, who proves Himself as such through the 
Holy Ghost, who glorifies Him and reproves the 
world of sin, and He shall once again return to search 
His congregation, and to fulfil His word concerning 
the one flock and the one shepherd. 

Whether the form of the thoughts and the particu- 

71 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

lar movement and progress of the narrative belong to 
the author or to Jesus Himself will hardly be ascer- 
tained with certainty. But that the tenor is authentic, 
and contains no contradiction to the synoptic record, 
ought to be clear as soon as one has apprehended the 
purpose of this record and these performances, and, by 
the side of it, the purpose and intent of the synop- 
tic narrative. We understand that John from his rec- 
ollections brings before his readers those very things 
in which the controversy about the person of Jesus 
comes to a crisis and a decision. We also understand 
that from the beginning he put everything under the 
aspecft that regards Him as the eternal Son of God, 
incarnated for our sakes, about whom they con- 
tended. From this point of view He it is who suffered 
everything that was done against Him, was repudiated 
and rejected in order not to judge but to save. John 
discloses the deepest ground of history which his read- 
ers can comprehend. He presents Jesus as one to 
whom he had united himself with the other disciples 
from the beginning, on the ground of their belief in the 
Baptist's word that He is the L,amb of God. His word 
and work have set before John and the disciples great 
mysteries from the beginning which were to be solved 
only through the resurrection. This mystery consisted 
on the one hand in the irreconcilable contrast between 
His miraculous power and oneness with the Father, 
and, on the other hand, His lowliness, suffering, and 
patience. It involves the paradox that He, the Son of 
Man, was also the Son of God while He yet remained 
the Son of Man. When He has risen again, however, 
everything is clear. Every opposition to Him is re- 



THK JOHANNEAN ACCOUNT 

sistance against One who, from eternity and to eternity, 
is God and I/>rd, and the Savior of sinful men. 

According to the established verdidt of the Church 
(to which only in the most recent time has objection 
been made, as if the objection had established itself as 
self-evident) both accounts, that of the synoptists and 
that of John, are right. They do not preclude each 
other; the Johannean account was not given in order 
to supplement that of the synoptists, altho it does. 
In neither of these accounts does Jesus appear as a 
founder of religion, as a man who, through the ful- 
ness and accuracy of His knowledge of God, His un- 
shaken faithfulness and sincerity, and the plenitude of 
His religio-ethical dodtrine, had become the author of 
that religion that consists of true union with God, 
which alone is true religion. He does not figure in 
these accounts as a man who, as Harnack says, does 
not belong to the narration. According to all the 
extant accounts — according to all, that is, which 
we learn about Him from the mouth and from the 
service of His disciples and His first believers — He 
is not the subjetl but the objeEl of religion. He 
teaches us to know the Father, He shows us the 
way to the Father — yes, He is the way, and also 
the truth, which one can trust forever, and He is the 
life. He who has Him and holds to Him is free from 
death, judgment, and perdition. He is the center of 
the Gospel. He brings in the Kingdom of God, and 
He brings that Kingdom to us. He not only pro- 
claims the forgiveness of sin, He actually forgives 
sin. "As many as received Him, to them gave He 
the right to become children of God, even to them 

73 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

that believe in His name." His word " It is I" is 
the really new thing which He has brought, the ful- 
filment of all the promises of God. The proof of His 
love — not of love in general — shows the adtual fulfil- 
ment of the old commandment which till then had 
never yet been fulfilled. "Fear not, only believe," 
says He. He will die, and, indeed, He must die, in 
order to prove Himself to the full the Savior and 
helper of the world which killed Him. 

But is all this correal now, and how are we to under- 
stand it? Shall we accept it just as it is here delin- 
eated to us, and say that He is our Savior ? Have we 
here the picture of the real Jesus, or was He a man 
misunderstood by His disciples and His believing 
congregation, but who, through this very misunder- 
standing, had nevertheless become one who exercised 
the greatest influence upon humanity? Is the picture 
which we receive of Him only the product of an histori- 
cal construction which, in spite of the contrast between 
Jesus and the Jews, has nevertheless originated under 
the influence of Jewish theology; or which, on the other 
hand, in spite of the fa<£t that the mission to the heathen 
was first prohibited by Jesus Himself, and in spite of 
His severe words concerning the ' 'dogs, ' ' has originated 
under the influence of heathenish ideas ? Is the start- 
ing-point, even the facft of the resurrection of Jesus, 
not historic reality ? Is it rather a produdl of Jewish 
eschatology, an epitome of the belief in an eternal 
life which one may represent to himself in this narra- 
tive form ? Does it belong, as Harnack thinks, to the 
fabrication of elements of the system of salvation on 
the part of the Christian congregations who could not 

74 



THE JOHANNEAN ACCOUNT 

otherwise represent to themselves the convidtion that 
Christ was not immersed in death, but had passed to a 
higher life in glory, power, and honors ? 

We must now pidlure to ourselves the whole series 
of objections and doubts urged against the primitive 
Christian accounts of Christ and against the apostolic 
preaching concerning Him. 



75 



V 

CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 



*T* HK question whether the historical reality does 
* i or does not correspond to the picfture which 

mBaM the apostolic narrative sketches of the career 
of Jesus and His purpose or purposes is 
beset with considerable difficulties. These difficulties 
are so great that one can not actually attempt, still less 
accomplish scientifically, a correct and perfect critique 
of Jesus without taking them into consideration. I 
say scientifically, but in reality the question at issue 
can not be answered by scientific processes. The de- 
cision for or against will come about differently in 
each case. The argument is only supported and sus- 
tained by scientific discussions, which, after all, are only 
of an intellectual kind, whereas the question itself, 
according to its nature, is a religio-ethical one. 

To begin with, we are concerned with that fadl on 
which primarily depend the entire apostolic teaching 
as to the importance of Jesus for us, the whole delinea- 
tion and exhibition of His life and activity and all the 
mysteries which we meet in it. This facft is the resur- 
rection of Jesus. Is it a facfl ? Harnack denies this, 
because, aside from the question whether these accounts 
are trustworthy, it stands entirely out of analogy with 
all that otherwise takes place in connection with human 
history — yes, even out of analogy with those resuscita- 
tions of the dead which Jesus Himself, according to 
76 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

our present records, has undertaken. Shall we be 
able to acknowledge such a fadl. which is opposed to 
all conditions of our existence, to the conditions of all 
other occurrences ? True, " I believe in a resurrection 
of the dead ' ' ; but is there really such a resurrection at 
the end of days, when the earth and the sea, hell and 
Hades, give back their dead ; when ' ' all that are in the 
tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God ' ' ? This 
is, indeed, the expectation and representation of the 
resurrection ; but can it hold its ground in the face of 
the sober and scientific observation of the f acfts of death 
and corruption ? Shall we, therefore, not be obliged 
perhaps to accept the newest conception of Har- 
nack, expressed by him in his " History of Dogma," 
according to which the Christian community itself 
produced this as well as other " f acfts of salvation/ ' 
as they are called, by clothing their hope of the 
future eternal life in the thought of a resurrection 
of the dead? Did they, as Harnack thinks, make 
Him to whom they owed eternal life not only a 
partaker in this fabricated dogma of the resurrec- 
tion, but the first who has in Himself experienced 
this great salvation, this everlasting deliverance? 
To be sure, according to all accounts before us (in 
which Harnack perceives, perhaps, eleven or more 
contributing hands), the tomb was empty. But if it 
really was empty — we know not whence comes this 
observation — this and the facfl of a resurrection are 
still far apart, since Jesus, as Peter says, showed Him- 
self as the risen One to none other than those whom 
God had chosen before as witnesses. A resurrection 
which, when it had just taken place, required faith 

77 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

to be believed — how can it be a fa<5t ? For facfts, says 
Harnack elsewhere (in his " History of Dogma "), can 
not be believed and need not to be believed — a proposi- 
tion which indeed is not true, since there are many 
fa6ts which one knows as very certain, altho one knows 
them only through belief. Besides, no one has seen 
the risen One in the mortal body, as it was when laid 
into the tomb. Then all had only ' ' appearances, ' ' 
from the women who went to the tomb to anoint the 
body of Jesus down to Paul. Among the women 
their experience is looked upon already as a vision, 
because they imagined they saw an angel. As to 
Mary Magdalene, she knew not the risen One. And 
what else are " apparitions,' ' "visages," "visions," 
than the gathering up of inner imaginings or experi- 
ences into a pidture, in which that which we inwardly 
carry with us externalizes itself to us to be seen as 
something which existed outside us? For example 
(not taking into account other narrations which can 
hardly be considered accounts of eye-witnesses), Paul 
enumerates a number of such appearances. He writes 
(I. Corinthians xv : 3-8) : " For I delivered unto you 
first of all that which also I received, how that Christ 
died for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and that 
He was buried ; and that He hath been raised on the 
third day according to the Scriptures ; and that He 
appeared to Cephas ; then to the twelve ; then He 
appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of 
whom the greater part remain till now, but som eare 
faller asleep ; then He appeared to James ; then to all 
the apostles ; and last of all, as unto one born out of 
due time, He appeared to me also." In connecting 
78 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

the Epiphany which He shared on the way to Damas- 
cus with the earlier appearances, and placing these 
completely on a par with it, every reason, as it seems, 
disappears for regarding any of these appearances 
as something other than acftual. They are not to be 
considered as mere pictures produced in the soul in 
some way, in clear, perceptible form, which present 
Jesus, living on in a higher plane of existence, if there 
be such, or as transfigured. 

If this were the true account, then we have gotten 
rid of the miracle of the resurrection only at the 
price of another miracle still more incomprehensible — 
namely, the miracle of appearances that are in all 
main respedts the same among all the persons report- 
ing them, or which, at least, produce the same result, 
in that they give to the beholders the idea of the res- 
urrection or religious conceptions of the same. On the 
night of the betrayal all the disciples are offended at 
Jesus. They abandon their faith that He is the Mes- 
siah, the Savior, and they all forsake Him and flee. 
The women, too, lose their faith, and come to the 
grave on the morning of the first day after the Sab- 
bath to anoint His body. This is all that is left to 
them. There they hear that He is risen, or is said to 
have risen. Terror and fright seize them. The 
women flee from the tomb, for they were afraid. Thus 
also the disciples. ' ' Certain women of our company 
amazed us, having been early at the tomb, saying that 
they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that 
He was alive." For to the disciples to whom they 
told these words ' ' these words appeared as idle talk, 
and they disbelieved them." When Jesus stood in 

79 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

the midst of them, and said, " Peace be unto 
you ! ' ' they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed 
that they beheld a spirit. In all cases, however, 
trembling and astonishment had turned into joy, espe- 
cially, as the Gospel of Mark adds, after Jesus ' ' had 
upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of 
heart, because they believed not them which had seen 
Him after He was risen.' ' How this change could 
have taken place inwardly unless the risen One had 
actually brought it about remains inexplicable, espe- 
cially when we refledl that as yet ' ' they knew not the 
Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead." 
Such a theory would make the case of the apostle Paul 
on the way to Damascus the most remarkable of all. 
In his case any connecting points, with movements of 
His inner life, are the more out of question, since these 
movements, at the most, had perhaps declared to him 
that Jesus was right, and that he was forever wrong, 
forever lost. Such a state of mind was the opposite of 
that which could have suggested the resurrection. 
How are we to understand the quick, sudden change of 
the women, of the disciples, of the brethren ? How 
explain the power of this newly acquired conviction 
of a * ' resurrection ' ' so great that it called forth every- 
where the same " appearance ' ' — an appearance, how- 
ever, which never afterward repeated itself — which 
certainly, in the missionary preaching as well as 
in the attestation of the Church of the first centuries, 
never was adted upon ? We know, indeed, the in- 
fectious strength of hypnosis or suggestion; but does 
any one seriously believe he can explain the ' ' appear- 
ances ' ' of the risen One after the analogy of the ap- 

80 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

pearances of Mary of gourdes and others ? The f a6t 
that the incipient disbelief was changed into belief, and 
that the missionary preaching from the beginning de- 
manded only faith, and plainly enjoined upon the 
Christians belief in Him whom they have not seen 
(I. Peter i: 8), bear so decidedly against the ex- 
planation of "the appearances" which would make 
them the products merely of the inner life, that this can 
no more remain the real question. The theory that in 
these J ' appearances ' ' we have merely pictures of the 
present condition of Jesus which God produces in the 
inner consciousness, implies an interference with our life 
processes that we are not prepared to believe. Such 
inner conceptions would be far more likely to dis- 
hearten us than to enlighten us as to the present state 
of Jesus. One needs only to know the psychology of 
the inner life as it is related to the living God, of the 
real inner life not merely imagined in the study, in 
order from the very start to rejecft such explanations 
of the faith in the resurrection as absolutely impos- 
sible. 

That the resurrection of Jesus, however, is con- 
ceived as something till then never experienced, 
that it should be different from the awakening of 
Jairus' daughter, or of the young man at Nain, and 
also from the rising of Lazarus from the grave, is not 
inconceivable. Jesus did not rise as these, to die 
again, but He rose to triumph over every hostile power, 
even over hell and death. God has justified Him in 
the power of His spirit, and thus He became the first- 
born of the redeemed, whose redemption is for all 
who believe in Him, the surety for the coming 

81 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

"liberty of the glory of the children of God." It is 
His calling to be the Messiah, and as Messiah the 
powerful Savior and helper; therefore, He rose, He who 
was laid in the grave, and yet is a different One; afflicfted 
with the scars of His cross, and yet living forever; 
whom even closed doors keep not from His own. 
Through Him has first been revealed : ' ' It is sown in 
dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, 
it is raised in power; it is sown in corruption, it is 
raised in incorruption." 

To this now is added the testimony of the apostle 
Paul, which confirms as decisively as possible the ac- 
counts of the bodily resurrection of the crucified, dead, 
and buried Christ. How Paul was convinced of the 
resurrection of Christ we have heard already. That 
he did not conceive the resurrection as a figurative ex- 
pression for transition into a better existence, for the 
lifting up to a more complete and higher form of ex- 
istence, we learn from the fifteenth chapter of the first 
epistle to the Corinthians. He puts it completely on a 
par with the future resurrection for which we wait. 
This future resurrecftion he describes as the completion 
of the redemption in us through a final complete aboli- 
tion of death by means of the renewing or spiritualiz- 
ing of our corporeality, which, when it has been re- 
newed, stands related to the present body as the fruit to 
the seed, while that which is earthly falls away with 
all weakness, sickness, and misery. So, according 
to Paul, did Jesus rise, and in His corporeality He ap- 
peared as the same who was laid into the grave, and yet 
different. This testimony of Paul rests upon his expe- 
rience on the way to Damascus. It is consequently 

82 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 



much older than any of the evangelical accounts, and 
confirms the theory, therefore, that since the beginning 
of the Christian preaching there has been no other 
preaching than that of the crucified, dead, buried, and 
risen Christ. What remains of differences in these 
accounts concerns not the fact of the resurrection, nor 
the fact of the different appearances of the risen One, 
but only their order, the communication of them in 
the circles of the male and female disciples of Jesus. 
Even concerning the reception which the news of the 
resurrection found, the fear and the terror which it 
excited, the disbelief which at first it met, and which 
found its most decided and most prominent repre- 
sentative finally in Thomas, that disciple who fore- 
saw the death of Jesus the most clearly and painfully. 
The accounts are just as accordant as they are concern- 
ing the change which the resurrection finally brought 
about. 

How will we now decide in view of such attestation ? 
The resurrection is, indeed, an unheard of event in 
the course of nature and history, and it only remains 
to acknowledge the fact in opposition to this natural 
course of things or to deny it resolutely. Accepting 
the attestation, we will have to renounce the explana- 
tion that has been offered for the fact that so soon 
after the death of Jesus men had come to the thought 
of the resurrection and to belief in the same. For the 
assertion that the inner thought of and faith in the ex- 
altation of the dead Christ to a higher, better existence 
have clothed themselves in this historic form opposes 
the testimony of Paul and the testimony of the evangel- 
ists. But if we are to deny the historic resurrec- 

83 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

tion, what remains, then? Can it indeed be possible 
that the entire world-historical appearance of Chris- 
tianity has, after all, drawn its world- overcoming 
power from imagined apparitions, visions, phantoms, 
such as we meet with so often, even in the legends 
of modern history, and to which we never ascribe 
reality ? If the resurrection is not a fact, no matter 
how one attempt its explanation, with the delusion 
concerning it is connected also the delusion concern- 
ing its importance. Paul especially expressed himself 
to this effect, that there is therefore only forgiveness 
of sins because Jesus has risen. Through the suffer- 
ing and death of Jesus this remission is acquired for 
us ; by His return into our life it is fulfilled or to be 
fulfilled on all those who believe in this Jesus. But if 
the resurrection is no return into life, what then? 
Where is the forgiveness ? Or can a serious consider- 
ation of the suffering and death of Jesus lead to this 
remission, so that His meekness ; remaining the same 
unto death, His pardoning love of enemies, His cling- 
ing to God and His faith in the victory of His love, 
shall assure us that we have not fallen under the 
vengeance of God, and may gratefully trust in His 
forgiveness ? Yes, but who, then, is lost? The disci- 
ples, who knew Jesus' meekness and love and faithful- 
ness, and yet forsook Him, or those who knew not 
Jesus and the wisdom of God ? Our sins forgiven! — 
whoever will believe this, what does he need ? 

Starting from this conception of His death and resur- 
rection, and going backward step by step, the entire 
evangelical account of the advent, work, and destiny of 
Jesus is depicted. Had He not been raised, then He 

84 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

could not have appeared as Messiah, as chosen by God, 
endowed with powers of the upper world, and finally 
as King, appointed by God Himself; He could not have 
applied to Himself the fulfilment of all the Divine 
promises, and thereby the realization of the hope of 
Israel. Then the whole Messianic picflure of the Gos- 
pels is wrong, and at the most an accommodation to 
the familiar ideas of Israel, in so far as such accom- 
modation was at all possible. The demand of the 
people did not call forth a sharp opposition, as at the 
feeding of the five thousand. The new heart-cheering 
message which Jesus brought, which was to work and 
really did work, tho under diverse veilings, can then 
have consisted only in the knowledge (which had 
come to Him, or had been discovered by Him, or, if 
one wishes, had fallen to His lot) of the true essence 
of God as a Father loving His creatures, in place of 
the severe and inexorable judge represented by older 
laws of Israel. With this, we may say, had come to 
Him also the idea of the infinite worth of our soul, 
of each individual human soul, which nowhere else 
can find rest and peace, and can not otherwise grow 
strong for an energetic life, and love, and ministry, 
save by giving itself to and being seized by this knowl- 
edge of God which had first come to Jesus, and which 
was preached by Him and retained in spite of all the 
opposition of the world. It was also clear to Jesus 
that one can not serve God merely by fixed ' ( statu- 
tory,' ' required performances, but only by giving the 
whole life, the whole person, to the service of the 
brethren. For we see the brethren. They are 
creatures of God like ourselves. God we see not. 

85 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Therefore to serve the brethren, that they have some- 
thing of this better life, means to serve God through 
them. 

If this be the whole account of the mission of Jesus, 
only that can be historical which is communicated to 
us of His teaching about the Kingdom of God and of 
His dodtrine about the Father. Everything else but 
this must be deducted — the influence under which 
the informants communicated their views and narra- 
tives, the traditions of the community, the notions 
current in the community that have proceeded, for 
the most part, from Israel and from Israelitish the- 
ology. It is, indeed, not easy to separate in the 
accounts that which is genuine from that which is 
spurious, since in the accounts of Jesus many things 
are contained which are derived from contemporary 
notions — e.g. , in the so-called eschatological discourses 
about His return, that which He says of the devil, of 
demons and of angels, who are not exacftly figures of 
speech with Him, but are represented in parables under 
other images and are interpreted by Him. 

But the knowledge of God's fathership, of which 
mention has been made, and which, as we must think, 
has an entirely different meaning from that which 
we derive from the statements of Scripture ; the 
knowledge He is said to have acquired of the in- 
finite worth of a human soul, and with it of the 
treasures called ' ' heavenly ' ' ; His alleged knowledge 
of love and service — these must give way to that other 
meaning of the expression \ \ Kingdom of God ' ' or 
' ' Kingdom of Heaven ' ' which we find in the first 
parable of the sower. It is purely a spiritual king- 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

dom, a purely spiritual government of God. It seems, 
indeed, not to harmonize with the instruction to pray 
for deliverance from all evil, and, in the diredlly fol- 
lowing parable of the wheat and the tares, appears 
to be mixed with specifically Jewish notions of 
the end and the final judgment. It may be difficult 
for us to separate the word, or rather the meaning, of 
Jesus from such additions and supplements as belong 
to the contemporary notions and to the misunderstand- 
ings of the disciples, but this must be undertaken. 
This is the more necessary, since with it is connected 
the animus of the conflidl between Jesus and His critics 
— the Pharisees and the almost entirely disbelieving 
priesthood. By such discrimination alone can be ex- 
plained what otherwise surprises Harnack as Christ's 
' ' going almost too far ' ' in His prediledtion for sinners. 
Jesus, it is true, had a " predilection " for those who 
were otherwise despised as " sinners.' ' He conde- 
scended to place Himself on an equality with the heathen 
who did not belong to the people of God. He finds 
His disciples, and seledls them from the circles to 
which men did not commonly award the claim to re- 
spect and honor. On the supposition we are consider- 
ing, Christ is indeed not the Savior in the sense of the 
apostolic account of Him or of the whole New Testa- 
ment from the first page to the last. He was not a 
founder of religion in the sense of having been a teacher 
and lawgiver, like Moses, or Zarathustra, or Buddha, 
or Confucius. He is in this theory a founder of relig- 
ion because He was the first indeed who knew and 
lived the religion of truth and of love, proclaimed 
the same, and so promoted it by life and dodtrine that, 

87 



THE ESSENCE OF CH RISTIANITY 

among all the rubbish already heaped up at the very 
beginning, and increased throughout the centuries, 
His truth is still cognizable. It is discerned, to be 
sure, only by the experienced, whose task it is now 
publicly to defend and propagate this newly acquired 
knowledge in confident trust in the power of truth. 
For, in fa eft, Jesus is, or was, not the objedl but the 
subjedl of religion, and there follows from this the 
critical axiom : Jesus does not belong to the narrative. 

To this view another consideration should be ex- 
pressed. In trying to trace back the picture of Christ 
and of His career to features which are alone historic- 
ally possible, we are not allowed to acknowledge Him 
as miracle worker. Not as if He had done nothing of 
that which is recorded of Him as miracle. As an his- 
torian, one must inquire the reason and the motive 
lying behind ideas as he finds them extant in the ac- 
counts of the miracle. But these accounts are, on the 
other hand, apparently so mixed with absolute im- 
possibilities (for example, the stilling of the storm on 
the Sea of Gennesaret) that we are hardly able to un- 
dertake, in all details, a clear and corredl separation of 
that which actually took place from the legendary ad- 
ditions. It is to be acknowledged that every personal 
free a<5lion is a miracle, but our thinking is so domi- 
nated by the constant relation between essential things 
and their phenomena that it is a paradox, inexplica- 
ble if considered as a product of a natural course of 
things, when we conceive personal action interfering 
to make use of nature outside the ordinary limits of this 
connection. It is, nevertheless, to be acknowledged 
that a personality so unitary, and, therefore, so spirit- 

88 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 



ually powerful as that of Jesus, is also capable of 
entirely different performances from those that we 
can do — performances which so far appear to us as 
miracles, as we are not able, or not yet able, to perform 
them ourselves. To this class belong the proofs of 
His healing strength and power on those whose life 
was disturbed in consequence of the environment of 
nature in which they stood. But these are, after all, 
not miracles. They do not lie beyond the measure of 
the humanly possible. Tho we may not be able to refer 
to similar events in the history of humanity within our 
reach, and must acknowledge that such cures, in which 
recovery takes place as soon as the word is spoken, are, 
for us, outside of our possibilities, yet such a power of 
the human mind is at least conceivable, in which one may 
not merely triumph over one's own suffering, but also 
helps others. To be sure, it would doubtless be neces- 
sary to excite in those who are to be helped life 
similar to that in the healer, in order to accomplish 
this effect, and just this is the thing wanting in most 
miracle accounts. This seems evident in the cures of 
most of those whose minds were suffering, or w T ho were 
mentally deranged. Here we are not obliged to con- 
fine ourselves to the conception held by the people, by 
the evangelists, and probably also by Jesus Himself, 
that the origin of those sicknesses is through demo- 
niacal possession. Operation of spirits belonging to 
another world we know nothing about. Demoniacal 
possession, therefore, does not exist, but a spiritual 
bondage, which, tho not in all, yet in many cases, 
yields to a powerfully working, sound will. Then, 
to be sure, such necessary accounts as these : ' ' He 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

healed them all ' ' and ' ' As many as touched were 
made whole," fall to the ground; and it remains 
strange that not one case is mentioned in which Jesus' 
power failed, whereas a case is mentioned in which the 
disciples could not help. But these affirmations belong 
to the coloring of the account we are considering. We 
are hardly prohibited from also supposing instances in 
which Jesus could not help. In such cases we may 
suppose that in His wisdom and love He would have 
directed the desire of the sick, or of their relatives, to 
something else than to healing. As soon as we have 
clearly settled it that the greatest of all miracles, the 
resurrection of Jesus, has no historical ground, all the 
elements in the miracle accounts that transcend the 
measure of the human, or of that which is humanly 
possible, disappear. For the historical inquirer can well 
concede that miraculous things that cause astonish- 
ment, and are, for the time being, inexplicable, have 
taken place somewhere and anyhow, and that these only 
become intelligible at a later stage of the development 
of the human intelligence and upon a more complete 
domination of nature, if we attain to such; but real 
miracles he can never and nowhere acknowledge. He 
knows mirabilia but not miracula. It is no dogma, 
but faCt, that there are not and can be no miracles. 
Miracles drop out completely not merely from the 
orderly constitution of nature, but also out of every 
historical connection, and anything that falls out of 
this connection can only be a produCt of legend or 
fiCtion, never of actuality. 

To this category also belongs what is reported of 
Christ's struggle with Satan immediately after the 

90 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

baptism in the Jordan — one of the plainest indications 
of the fashion in which mythological images originate 
through the externalizing and hypostatizing of views, 
which in themselves manifest nothing whatever of 
superhuman life and essence. 

But if in Christ's advent, life, and work nothing 
superhuman or extra human is to be found, then the 
narrative of His supernatural generation, of His 
fatherless birth, and the virginity of His mother, falls 
out of history as a matter of course. This, too, is but an 
effort to explain His supposed superhuman coming, His 
seemingly more than human essence, as is also the 
Pauline deduction of the self-emptying of Him who 
was God and became man, and the Johannean descrip- 
tion of the Word which was forever with God, yes, 
was God Himself, and became flesh, as we are. As a 
matter of course, the historical inquiry can award no 
claim to truth either to such narratives as are found in 
L,uke and Matthew, or to such theologumena as we 
meet with in Paul and John. The simple observed 
reality of the commonly known human essence was 
taken as the normal aspedl of it. It was not under- 
stood, therefore, how from this ordinary human nature 
such a man as Jesus could be normally produced and 
born — One so endowed, so pure. It followed from this 
that He was regarded as God who had become man. 
Upon this theory w r as built the idea of the deification 
of our nature. But whoever once was man was man 
completely. He is born like us, begotten of a human 
father, born of a human mother, fruit of the nature- 
connedlion of humanity. In each member of our race 
the age-long life of humanity reproduces itself in such 

91 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

a way that it proves itself to be united not only with 
the life of all times, but with the formative elements 
of its environment. Thus in the case of Jesus; He is 
a born Jew, as L,uther has emphasized it in his masterly 
writing: "That Jesus Christ is born a Jew," but a 
Jew who received into Himself the entire religious im- 
petus of life accumulated in all time, kept Himself free 
from all aberrations and perversions, grasped with all 
seriousness and all fidelity His religio-ethical task as 
His life's calling, realized it and shaped it. Perhaps, 
withal, under great influence, but perhaps independ- 
ently of it, He deepened His knowledge of God and 
strengthened His hold upon God, so that He grew 
into complete harmony with it, and thus matured to 
the estate of that religious genius which He remains 
to this day, unique in our human history. 

Thus, and thus only, is to be explained Christianity, 
this unique phenomenon in the history of humanity — 
a religion which was able, without support of the civil 
powers, to become in a short time authoritative for the 
ancient world, and which to-day still wins the nations 
by awakening and satisfying interests that can not 
be estimated and measured in the light of any earthly 
proportions. Christianity is religion. It offers con- 
nection with God, but neither for an earthly prize nor 
for earthly objedls. Tho many sins have been com- 
mitted and are still being committed in the name of 
Christianity, it always has appeared to be the purest 
and the most effective where its devotees have sacri- 
ficed worldly utility and have sought it only on account 
of the craving of the soul for God. For ' ' Thou hast 
created us for Thee, and our heart is restless in us 

92 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

till it rests in Thee." This resting in God, that we 
may receive power for everything which it is incum- 
bent upon us to do and to suffer in our earthly life, 
bound to the clod, is the interest which Christianity 
satisfies. It satisfies it through Christ's preaching : 
(i) the fatherhood of God; (2) the endless worth of 
a human soul ; and (3) love and service as our life's 
task. Everything else is accessory, not belonging 
to the case, e.g., the supposed miracle-working of 
Christ with which His fame invested itself, and which 
thereby may have contributed to the first propagation 
of Christianity. But that whereby He actually oper- 
ated and still operates are these three great truths, the 
everlastingly established pillars of life conformed to 
the image of God, and — if the expression be allowed — 
existing in paradisaic blessedness. 

To be sure, Christianity, so far as our knowledge 
reaches back, has from the beginning been preached 
not so much as a Gospel of Jesus as a Gospel about 
Jesus, and in the Gospel of Jesus, Jesus had the same 
position and importance as in the Gospel concerning 
Jesus. But this facft, essential as it is in its bearing 
upon the world-historical appearance of Christianity 
as the religion of the Church, belongs, after all, only to 
the mythology of the Christian preaching. The real 
and lasting substance of the Gospels which forms the 
underground and background of this mythology is this: 
the knowledge of the eternal essence of God as the 
Father of His human children, and the knowledge 
of the ever unchanging and unchangeable relation 
between God and the world, with which to familiarize 
ourselves, and into which to grow, must be our task, 

93 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 



since now it has been made known by Jesus. Every 
advance is made by way of the intellect. From it 
really proceed the determination of the will, tho per- 
haps only after long and serious vacillations. In this 
influencing of the will by the adlion of the intellect is 
explained the temporary authorization of the reception 
of such mythological elements into the Christian ac- 
counts as the effe&uation of the forgiveness of our 
sins through Christ's death, its accomplishment by His 
resurrection, and His lasting intercession for us by His 
exaltation at the right hand of God, whither he went 
to intercede Himself for us as a priest before God. 
For now * ( He is able to save to the uttermost them 
that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He 
ever liveth to make intercession for them." In all 
this the main thing is that which is effected and ac- 
complished by such preaching — namely, a knowledge 
of God and of the Divine life. When both these 
things are accomplished, the adventitious aid by which 
one has come to this degree of development must and 
will fall. They must be tolerated as " props," for the 
time being necessary to many, but they are no longer 
necessary to the strong, accomplished minds which 
have found or received the "powers," and are there- 
fore able to do without the ' ' props. ' ' It is something 
of this kind that Harnack means to express when he 
says that the ' ' powers ' ' and ' \ props ' ' come from the 
same necessity, and have the same objedt ; as long as 
there are those, and there may always be such, who 
need the "props," these "props" will remain. But 
the cultured man can not use them because they give 
offense to his so-called scientific convictions of the 

94 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

limited form and bounds of our present existence, of 
the unlimited God ruling over it as providence or 
eternal order. The religious, cultured man does not 
need them, because he has without them the truth, 
upon the knowledge of which religion depends. In 
maintaining thus the difference between a religion of 
" powers' ' and a religion of " props," of an esoteric 
and an exoteric form of Christianity, the cultured man, 
able to command the "powers," is not hindered from 
living in the same belief and in the same love as those 
w 7 ho need ' ' props ' ' to reinforce their love, and he is 
at one with those who need no crutches. That on the 
one side he feels himself more drawn to those who 
share his view is outweighed on the other side by the 
ineradicable desire and joy to be a child with all the 
children, and even to regard himself as a child wdth 
these mythological notions. 

Thus Jesus the Christ is the Messiah in a differ- 
ent sense from that in which the Jews expedled 
Him, and in a different sense, moreover, from that 
understood by the disciples, and in general not only 
by the first believers, but by all Christendom. He is 
the Messiah as the redeemer from a religion that 
reckons with false motives and aims, as the deliverer of 
humanity from its terror of an angry deity, w 7 ho had 
to be appeased first with gifts and sacrifices before He 
would be gracious. He is the Messiah as the orig- 
inator of a new order, the discoverer and fosterer of 
the true religion, who first knew the truth, accepted 
and practised it with animation, and lived it to the end 
with faultless faithfulness. Having become one with 
God in grateful adoring faith, God has chosen and 

95 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

called Him, with His motives and His objects, to live 
the life of God on earth. Thus men may not only 
know in Him and His conduct of life what a God they 
have, but they also have in His conduct the very con- 
duct of God Himself. God through Him and in Him 
stands related to us — through Him because God com- 
pletely fills Him; in Him because Jesus has completely 
entered into the life of God. Thus, God found in 
Jesus the man in whom and through whom He stands 
related to the others, and through whom and in whom 
the others also have their right relation to God. That 
Jesus has lived the life of God on earth, that He was 
not only united with God in His thoughts and aims, and 
in His relation toward the others, but was, in fact, as one 
with God, this is, indeed, a conception not easy to enter- 
tain, especially so long as one still adheres to individu- 
ality, absoluteness, and freedom of the personal God. 
Harnack himself would perhaps not so express himself, 
but rather would prefer the rationalistic views, tho 
not perhaps the language of the eighteenth century. 
But we take up this view, tho differing from that of 
Harnack, because it does more justice to the advancing 
importance of Jesus even for the later generations. 
' ' Christ lived the life of God on earth. ' ' This idea is 
certainly hard to conceive when we regard God not 
only as the unapproachable background of the life of 
Jesus, but as the true power which moved and person- 
ally filled Him and made the man Jesus to be the 
abode of God's self- revelation for us. But is the diffi- 
culty of this conception greater than the difficulties 
which the other idea of God, as the power ruling the 
world in absolute freedom of His love, involves ? Are 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 



not the difficulties which lie in the idea of reconcilia- 
tion still greater ? Does the thought of reconciliation, 
if it means something else than the change of our dis- 
position toward God, harmonize any better with the 
thought of a God exalted above space and time, there- 
fore also independent of change — yes, even of the in- 
fluence of our condudl ? And is not that adoration 
which springs from the revelation in Christ of the 
life of God in Him far better, more w T orthy of man 
and God, than the "prayer in the name of Jesus, 
through which we seek the Father's face " ? 

We have brought before us the pidlure of Christ as 
it is formed on the basis of the critical processes now 
going on. Every one will concede that in essentials it 
is corredlly drawn. It is particularly the picture of 
Him which Harnack has drawn before his hearers. We 
ask : Is this drawing scientifically authorized ? Har- 
nack says that his intention has been to obtain this 
picfture by way of historical criticism of the sources. 
Does his criticism really comprise a historical critique? 
He does not examine the sources and their value ac- 
cording to a historical method. He decides on the 
contents of his authorities neither from their differ- 
ences among themselves, nor from their differences 
with ulterior authentications and communications, nor 
does he let pass their agreement. Of course, actually 
we have no exadtly contemporaneous sources, but some 
that are nearly contemporaneous, which, according 
to the declarations of some of their authors, go back at 
least to the testimonies of eye-witnesses and ear- wit- 
nesses. Could we do away also with these sources as 
being, after all, affedted by the standpoint and attitude 

97 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

of their authors thirty, fifty, or sixty years after the 
events, we have still to dispose of the testimony of 
the apostle Paul, whose declarations coincide in the 
most essential points with the accounts of those later 
sources. These sources, however, and also the Pauline 
declarations, yield a different picture from that drawn 
by the modern critic, whose traits are not even shaded 
through Jewish sources. Now the picture of Christ 
to be derived from the sources agrees in no wise with 
any event otherwise known from history, or that be- 
longs to history, or is possible from the ordinary 
courses of history. On this account Harnack says, 
and many with him, that this pidlure is unhistorical. 
The significance of the question may, therefore, be 
stated thus: Is that what Jesus was, did, and still does 
to be accounted antecedently incredible because the 
historical analogies are wanting for it ? It is admitted 
that Jesus stands absolutely unique in history. No 
one is like Him, either in His department of religion 
or in any other respedl. So much the more it is now 
required that His activity shall completely conform 
to laws of our existence, and be put in close harmony 
with nature and history, if it is to be of importance to 
us. A being who is above this harmony and system 
of nature and history can not influence us, who always 
live and think in the terms of this system. So argues 
the critic. But even if it should be admitted that 
Jesus in all respedts must be regarded as belonging to 
the system of nature and history whose product and 
producer we ourselves are, still the question would re- 
main whether the founder of Christianity, as He is 
called, has not differently regarded and differently 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

solved this problem? He was concerned about our 
union with God. Is it correct to say that we obtain 
union with God because in His person, by word and 
life, He shows us the way ? Or is His claim correal 
that still more is required than merely such a showing 
of the way ? 

Harnack omits to ask this, and instead he pro- 
ceeds with his argument that the image of Christ, of 
His life and work, His passion, death, and resurrec- 
tion, as found in the sources, must be regarded 
as unhistorical, because it does not connedl itself 
with the laws of all other existence and the events 
that go on in the life of humanity. From this 
ground, therefore, he rejedls one thing or accepts 
another that his sources give him, and opposes the 
apostolic preaching of the Gospel about Jesus in its 
most fundamental points. The point, however, which 
is thus decisive for his critique, and which determines 
his critical treatment throughout, is in reality nothing 
else than a dogma. Under cover of the authority 
of his name, he calls his treatment a historical critique; 
we, on the other hand, must refuse this critique as 
being dogmatically biased. This dogmatic tendency 
Harnack himself admits by still accepting things and 
events which, as he says, a time mor-e advanced in the 
knowledge of the natural system of things not only 
ought to rejedl, but in all probability will rejedt. Thus 
he prepares himself for an ever greater emptying of his 
Christ picture, not only, as he thinks, of every super- 
human trail, but of every relation, even the remotest, 
to that Christ to whom centuries and millenniums now 
have prayed. 

99 
SLofC. 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Meanwhile, in refusing Harnack's critique as dog- 
matically biased, we do not thereby mean to affirm 
that it is a mistake to approach our sources with dog- 
matic criticism. On the contrary, only dogmatic criti- 
cism can decide the question, and all historical criticism 
receives its power and the direction of its process from 
dogmatic criticism, not, to be sure, from the presup- 
position of a certain dogma, but from criticism whose 
first and most serious question is whether the view and 
estimation of the person and history of Jesus that is 
expressed in the sources is authorized or not. This 
question, however, can only be answered as an ethico- 
religious question. 

Historical criticism can the less decide, since the 
question is whether or not the history with which we 
are here concerned stands actually outside of all other 
history, and thus differs from all other history. The 
Christ whom the apostolic account describes has for 
His object to save, not humanity in general, least of 
all the wise, the noble, the mighty of earth, but the 
sinners and the whole world of sinners. Has Jesus 
solved this problem ? Has He solved it for me and in 
me? Could He and can He solve it ? This question 
can not at all be historically decided, tho it concerns a 
facft which is either real or an illusion. But in order 
to decide this question it requires not a c ' scientific ' ' 
disinterestedness, but it is to be put and treated, as 
Harnack also treats it, as a question of the most burn- 
ing personal interest. One must enter into a personal 
relation to Jesus, and that not a relation in which, by 
certain claims which he makes or repudiates, one re- 
stricts from the very beginning the influence of Jesus 

100 



CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

on men ; but where one examines the records to ascer- 
tain whether the effect which proceeds from that influ- 
ence is a redeeming one or not, and whether or not 
this Jesus, as He is here " described before our eyes," 
has redeemed us, and still redeems from the ban of 
sin, of guilt, of death, and the judgment. 

Harnack has omitted this task. He has not even 
mentioned it to his readers. From the very start he 
has regarded it as the self-evident standpoint of his- 
torical criticism that all essential features by which 
the Christ-picture of the apostolic prediction character- 
istically detaches itself from every other historical pic- 
ture are not only unessential, but for the most part 
incorrect. Only those features are essential and cor- 
rect in which His figure, aside from its superior 
endowment, its faithfulness, its vocation, the fulfilment 
of it, appears as not at all different from our own. But 
before we prosecute on our part this task omitted by 
Harnack, and examine the credibility of the apostolic 
or New Testament conception of the person, history, 
and work of Christ, let us examine and estimate the 
merit of the picture of Christ drawn by Harnack. 



101 



VI 

ANTI-CRITIQUE 

Pons this figure of the non-risen Christ, whose 
body was left to decay while His spirit went to 
God, satisfy us ? The figure of the perfectly 
pure One, of the inspired, loving, patient 
teacher, of the faithful leader of the mighty Lord and 
Master, who indeed has not proved Himself by adlual 
miracles, but continually proves Himself by what is 
more than miracles, by His power to attradl us to 
Himself — does this satisfy us ? It must indeed be a 
great influence which He exercises, a powerful effect 
proceeding from Him, when He urges us to believe 
what He has believed in the way He believed it, when 
He animates us to love as He loved, when He strength- 
ens us to triumph over all opposition of the world as 
He triumphed — namely, through a quiet, patient suffer- 
ing, in reliance on the final vidlory of truth over all 
meanness, envy, and obstinacy of the world! Is this 
not sufficient for a reformation of the world — more 
necessary to-day, perhaps, than ever? Is it not 
sufficient for a world which, as it seems, is to-day more 
susceptible to the truth than ever, even tho not to the 
truth of the church-preaching ? 

We ask not whether this Christ-pidlure satisfies our 

claims. Human claims are often very small and 

trifling, and the ideas by which we are moved are 

often very poor. This is well illustrated in most of the 

102 



ANTI-CRITIQUE 



political parties of our day. How poor are the claims 
which they make to the understanding and will of 
those who belong to them ! How easily are they satis- 
fied with words which mean nothing, and which only 
serve to w r eaken the impression which the opponent 
might make ! How superficially are questions treated 
which ought to stir society to its profoundest depth 
to seek a solution which the shallow journalist cer- 
tainly can not give! But still more do we perceive 
this in the history of religious movements themselves, 
which are but seldom influenced by original and great 
thoughts, but mostly follow the suggestions of small 
minds, and finally lose themselves in the sand. How 
poor are the religious and ethical fundamental ideas of 
Roman Catholicism — the idea, for instance, of making 
redress for our sins by the confession of the mouth to 
the satisfaction of the work and affliction of the heart; 
or the idea that an especialty distinguished Christian 
may have acquired a stock of holiness; or the idea of 
the mediatorship of the priests ! How easily intelli- 
gible is the gradual degeneration of the Christian faith 
and the religious life by falling back into the lower 
stages of heathenish views of life and death, of the 
Deity and His demands on men, their aims, and their 
ability to perform ! And yet how tenaciously and 
vitally the priesthood and people cling to these views, 
and how easily are even evangelical Christians often 
dazzled by the little allegorical imagery and formalism 
of Catholicism ! No, it is not from a consideration of 
that which we claim that we can pass a judgment on 
the worth or worthlessness of views, persons or events. 
This is often done, and the judgment is influenced by 

103 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

the greatness or smallness, the force or weakness, of 
the claim. We ask, therefore, more correcftly : Does 
that Christ-picture that criticism draws satisfy our 
wants ? 

First of all we must consider the wants with 
whose satisfaction we are concerned. What are they ? 
Are they spiritually intellectual, or are they esthetic 
wants? These are comparatively easy to be satis- 
fied. A figure like the Biblical and ecclesiastical 
Christ gives the greatest stimulus to our intellect. 
From such a consideration the sketch or construction 
has been undertaken in which every superhuman and 
every extra human feature is erased, and only a perfeCt, 
all-comprising human being is left, tho this is en- 
hanced in the highest degree. Paul not only knew 
but openly declared that the preaching of Christ has 
unendurable severities for those who seek after wisdom, 
but who are not able to comprehend the Divine wisdom 
surpassing in its heights all human wisdom, and there- 
fore regard it as foolishness. Nevertheless, and just 
on this account, He demanded faith for His preaching; 
not a faith relying on the authority of the apostle 
(how should he demand of the Gentiles the acknowl- 
edgment of His authority?), but a faith which itself 
convinced of the truth of His preaching in spite of all 
gainsaying arguments, a faith which silenced all 
counter-arguments by overwhelming considerations, 
and accepted the word of the apostle. It is evident 
that the tenor of the apostolic preaching is in the 
strongest opposition to the movement of our thoughts, 
and that our experience rejects this preaching as un- 
necessary or in the most favorable case as impossible. 

104 



ANTI-CRITIQUE 



Nevertheless, it shows itself to be wisdom, tho not a 
wisdom set in comparison with a wisdom expressing 
itself differently and coming to other results, but only 
a wisdom by which our spiritually intellectual wants 
are fully satisfied. But such satisfaction depends on 
the satisfaction of other wants, which everywhere pre- 
cede the intellectual wants. These are our moral 
wants and, closely connected therewith, our relig- 
ious. 

But our moral wants are different. Some say that 
they need the Biblical, or, as they express it, the 
ecclesiastical Christ, for their peace and for the 
living of a blessed, vigorous life. Others deny this, 
and say, if they need a Christ at all, they want such 
a one as we endeavored to delineate after the model of 
Harnack and others, as distinguished from the Biblical 
Christ. Who decides? The former, as it appears, 
are vigorous natures not knowing at all the feeling of 
weakness, of infirmity, of moral disability to work, to 
say nothing of the sense of the greatness of their guilt. 
Never, indeed, have they come to utter the sigh : 
1 1 Whither shall I go because I am oppressed with 
many and great sins?" Such men admit that there 
are men who have put themselves outside of the peace 
of human society, be it through the fault of their edu- 
cation, or through the circumstances in which they are, 
or through the nature of their environment, tho in all 
cases through some guilt of their own. What becomes 
of them, what future awaits them after this life, no 
one knows. As long as one is not molested or hurt by 
them, one is inclined to be indulgent, provided only 
they are made harmless in a permissible manner. One 

105 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

claims for himself indulgence, for "man errs as long 
as he strives/ ' and "we all stumble." 

But we only need a degree of indulgence, which is 
offered to every serious and honest endeavor, offered 
to finite man in his circumscribed finite limitation, 
offered over against his capacity to err, as a pardon 
not only for his belated conditions, but also for his 
positive errors, if he only tries to amend them and 
himself. If the representatives of this much-propagated 
view can get on with a Christ who is nothing essen- 
tially different from themselves, except, possibly, more 
perfedt, more ideal, more pious ; if with the Biblical 
Christ, the Christ of the New Testament accounts, they 
will have nothing to do, but are in the most decided 
conflict, not only from intellectual but also moral rea- 
sons, who proves to them that they are wrong? Who 
proves to them that, in their judgment of themselves and 
their verdicft about Christ, they are wrong ? Who proves 
that those deeply afflicted, deeply humbled natures, 
conscious of their guilt, seeking only mercy and for- 
giveness, like the publican, are right in their judg- 
ment of themselves and in seeking after mercy, with 
their faith in the mercy of Christ and the love of God 
alone ? 

And yet it must be possible to convince every 
one of moral or ethico-religious truth, tho it is not 
meant thereby that every one will be convinced. 
For moral and religious truth reckons with freedom. 
Whether a man will acknowledge moral and religious 
truth which concerns him is a matter of his will. If 
he will not, he puts himself indeed in opposition to the 
truth which has been attested to him, but he sees him- 

106 



ANTI-CRITIQUE 



self at once obliged, in order not to be regarded as 
intellectually lower, to establish intellectually his oppo- 
sition, and thus to maintain an apology for his condudl. 
That this apology then takes the form of an attack 
upon the supposed truth, its adherents and representa- 
tives, is not surprising. It were surprising if it were 
otherwise. On this account are all apologies of truth 
fruitless for those who are resolved not to acknowledge 
the truth, or fruitless so long as the conflidl against such 
the decision lasts. A cogent argument which abrogates 
freedom of decision and which is completely demonstra- 
tive, like an argument in mathematics or the natural 
sciences, does not and can not exist in the pres- 
ent case. This is not, however, because the truth is 
questionable ! The propositions which are concerned 
here are more important than all propositions of 
mathematics and natural sciences, tho they require an 
entirely different method of proof; and that they can 
only be believed and accepted by the free acknowledg- 
ment of the will is precisely their value and loftiness. 
L,ove with which we are loved by men can not be 
absolutely demonstrated ; all its proofs may be re- 
garded as selfishness. But how poor is the life of him 
who believes not in love ! 

From such considerations we may safely assert the 
proposition upon which the argument depends — viz., 
that it must be possible so to describe the moral wants, 
the wants of the sinful man, to fulfil which Christ ap- 
peared, that one can generally decide whether he can be 
satisfied by this pidlure of Christ or that. For Christian- 
ity, with its gift, the grace of God in Christ Jesus, and 
the power of redeeming grace, comes forward with 

107 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

claim to credibility not only just as great as the claim 
of the law, but even greater, or, more corredlly speak- 
ing, still more powerful. Whether it is believed is 
another matter. We therefore put the question thus : 
Does the Christ, as we have endeavored to portray 
Him, according to the old rationalistic and according 
to the most recent views, satisfy the moral wants ? 

In the outset it seems as if He did satisfy them. He 
shows us a harmoniously perfecft, moral life satisfied in 
itself, whose ideality and idealism attradt us irresist- 
ibly and with powerful, yes, with too powerful, force 
diredl us into the same paths in which Jesus went. 
Who could and would not follow where such a prede- 
cessor tells and shows us the w r ay ? With the most 
careful observance of the so-called statutory law, 
one by no means satisfies the absolutely cogent de- 
mands of moral truth on the whole life by free obe- 
dience or by a life burning with love. Tho it may be 
difficult for us to follow Jesus in this way, we try it, 
and we derive ever new courage from looking at Him 
and from His example. To be sure, He never fell, 
and he alone has fully lived the truth and practised it 
faithfully. We fall again and again, but this is indeed 
the lasting difference between Him and us: His total- 
ity and our incompleteness, His faithfulness and our 
unfaithfulness, His constancy and our ever-repeated 
falling, His stability and our continual vacillations. But 
on just this very account we need Him, in order to be 
influenced by Him again and again, and to go again 
and again to be shown the path where looking back- 
ward only detains and hinders, along which one only 
advances by continually looking upward and forward. 

108 



ANTI-CRITIQUE 



Jesus shows us what man can be and do, and, tho we 
can not be what He was, or do what He did, and shall 
never accomplish it as long as we live, we nevertheless 
can follow Him. For this reason He was man, wholly 
man. He shows us a Kingdom of purely spiritual ob- 
jects ; He calls it the Kingdom of God, a realm in which 
we do God's will or the whole truth, and serve in love ; 
in which we are loved of God and are the beloved of 
God. He is a power that freely displays Himself 
in men who have risen from the dark, natural ground 
of their existence, and have suffered themselves to be 
lifted up to this luminous height. To live by this 
power and to live for this life raises us above all the 
misery of daily existence. Thus one becomes inwardly 
lord over the world. Tho we belong to the world, yet 
we rise above it. Thus one learns to endure what he 
suffers from the world, as Jesus bore it, without being 
turned away from the truth of his motives and objects. 
For from this inner height of our freedom from the 
world, and in our dominion over the power of its 
bondage, nothing and no one can throw us down as 
long as we will not yield. Thus Jesus teaches, thus 
His example helps us to live and suffer, and to be and 
remain free. He teaches us to love our fellow com- 
batants as well as our opponents, who are our oppo- 
nents only because the glory of Christ and of His way 
has not yet risen to them. He convinces us that to live 
and to love belong together, that to love means only 
to live, that only that life is worth anything which is 
a life in love, and that only a life in love has in itself 
the promise and the surety of eternity. For we have 
our life only from each other and only with each 

109 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

other, and therefore we have it only by loving. All 
other life is only semblance, and becomes a lie and 
must perish. Only this life in love is real life, only 
this is satisfied, eternally satisfied, and therefore has 
everlasting existence. This life is a blessed life, in 
which one so lives for the other that each thinks no 
longer of himself, but only of others. Whether eternity 
is an everlasting continuation of this life, or whether 
it is only the freedom, satisfaction, and an independ- 
ence from the world, and the change and misery that 
is to be expressed through it, is of no consequence. 
For in this consists the satisfaction and blessedness : 
that one needs nothing more and thinks no more of 
himself, but only of others. 

Thus Jesus lived, one with God and one with us. 
He is on this account not only our Father but the 
power which to-day still carries us along and draws 
men to Him, and will so long as the world shall exist, 
altho He was but a man. But these, His after-effeCts, 
are perfectly unique, corresponding to the uniqueness 
of His person and of His calling — after-effedts which 
can not be found again and can not repeat them- 
selves, tho they are only after-effeCts of His historical 
appearance. For this was His calling, to stand as the 
first and unique witness of God in history as a per- 
petual reminder of God, and as the everlasting 
leader — yes, more than leader — for us. He showed 
us by His life what it means to be man, and thus, and 
only thus, how the individual and the individual soul 
has endless worth. 

Incessantly Jesus draws us with Him into the path 
where He walked, and which He opened and showed 

110 



ANTI-CRITIQUE 



to us. He shows us God as the loving Father ; He 
helps us to lay hold of Him who wishes and desires 
nothing else than that we live for the brethren, and 
thereby for Him, for His Kingdom and its objedts, 
and serve them fully and wholly with all joy and 
willingness. In doing this, in wishing this, in procur- 
ing this, in following Jesus, becoming one with Jesus, 
pursuing this way, as He has been one with us before 
ever we went this way, we now a6l and walk accord- 
ing to His will and toward His objects. For these we 
now exist, and thus we are really one in spirit with 
Him. Then we are sure of His forbearance at our 
defedls, our shortcomings, our wavering. For, tho 
fallen, we remain not on the ground ; in the strength 
of the inspiration, yes, the irresistible moral urging, 
which proceeds from Him, we always have power to 
get up again and indefatigably to goon. We condemn 
our defedls, our vacillation, and wavering. On this 
ground, should not forgiveness be sure to us ? 

On this wise, in this way, which we can hardly 
delineate more seriously than is here done, this Christ- 
pi(fture, thispidlure of the Man who has lived and who 
has come to His goal, of the spiritual ruler of humanity 
through His teaching and life for all times, is to satisfy 
our moral needs. But what pity that sin is no more 
sin ! It is finitude, error, imperfection, weakness, 
mistake, but no sin ! In this view one reckons not 
with a living God, differing from us, before whose 
judgment-seat we all must appear, nor with the God 
who, under no circumstances, wills the sin. Sin and 
finitude, sin and weakness, sin and error are near to 
each other, and weakness and error originated first 

111 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 



through sin, finitude and limitedness became first sin- 
ful through sin. But sin itself is a diredl opposition 
to the will of God, is that which God does not will, 
which He denies, which He opposes, wherever and 
however it may assert itself. For a time, perhaps, one 
may resign himself to the dream that this Christ-pi6lure 
satisfies ; but in truth it only satisfies him who, in 
the first place, remembers not the living God, who 
needs not God and prays not to Him. It satisfies only- 
such fundamental ethical views as we meet with in large 
circles, views which make all morality come out after 
the law of development from primitive conditions, which 
teach that man becomes man by lifting himself from the 
dark, material ground from which He is said to have 
ascended. In short, this Christ-picfture, this reverse of 
all development, this revolution in place of evolution, 
satisfies only views which know not a fall. But where 
one is in earnest to follow that which this picture is to 
show us, and where one is in earnest to reckon with 
consciousness — nay, with the belief that we finally 
have, nevertheless, to deal with the living God, before 
whom we must give an account for our deeds, our 
thoughts and our desires — there this picture comes 
upon painful experiences. The experience recurs 
which one of the greatest of our race once expressed 
in words that to this day, excepting in some small 
variation, are yet recognized as sad — yes, as most 
sad truth. It is experience which we can not do 
away with by the remark that it can not claim uni- 
versal validity because it is connected with special 
aberrations — namely, with the aberrations of Pharisa- 
ism. I mean that experience of the apostle Paul, 

112 



ANTI-CRITIQUE 



which he describes in Romans vii : ' ' For to will is 
present with me, but to do that which is good is not. 
I find, then, the law that, to me who would do good, 
evil is present, . . . bringing me into captivity under 
the law of sin, which is in my members." God is 
never and nowhere satisfied with the good w r ill, and 
God's law had and has the special task to urge upon 
the whole people the knowledge of sin. But what is 
to take place when, as Paul says again, every mouth 
is stopped, and all the world is brought under the 
judgment of God and is obliged to undergo the pun- 
ishment ? Do we, then, still believe we are able to rise 
to the level of this Christ-pidture, and forget what is 
behind, in order to go forward with ever new resolu- 
tion and zeal ? Is guilt merely a thought which one 
can give up, or a ban which presses us down and keeps 
us down, even tho we should like to forget it a thou- 
sand times ? 

We have a remarkable document from the writings of 
Pharisaic Judaism, coming from the years immediately 
after the destruction of Jerusalem — the so-called fourth 
book of Esdras. The author frankly acknowledges the 
judgment of God upon Israel in the destruction of 
Jerusalem, altho he wrongly ascribes the motive. He 
also acknowledges the irrefragable moral duty of Israel 
to realize the law of God, tho he does assert it in rela- 
tion to himself and to Israel. Still, more zealously — 
more zealous than ever before — the people must follow 
after the fulfilment of the law. Then will they know, 
what every wdse and prudent man knows already of 
himself, that we sin under compulsion. Sin dwells 
for once in us. This is Adam's fault, through whom 

113 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

sin came into the world. " O thou Adam, what hast 
thou done ? ' ' was the complaint of the righteous. On 
account of the existing sin, God has made known the 
law (for the legislation is regarded as the promulgation 
of righteousness, not the putting of it into effecft), that 
the children of Israel should live as closely as possible 
in accordance with the law. If they do this they come 
to judgment with a treasure of good works, which are 
balanced against their sins, and have the prospecft that 
God will pardon them. To be sure, they have no cer- 
tainty of pardon, because they do not live on a forgive- 
ness already realized, but only in the hope of forgive- 
ness. Whoever receives this forgiveness will wonder 
at the greatness of God's mercy. But God is still 
merciful, and to whom should He be merciful if not 
to those who, by obedience to His will, have labored 
for mercy ? For He is the merciful Judge : ' ' For if He 
did not pardon them that were created by His word, 
there would, peradventure, be very few left in an 
innumerable multitude ' ' (4 Esdras, vii : 139, 140). 

Do 3 7 ou think this solution of the question, which 
must necessarily engage every honest, aspiring man, to 
be correcft ? And do you think the answer has been 
given to our question, whether the new and newest 
Christ-picfture satisfies those needs whose satisfaction 
we seek ? Certainly not ! But it only expresses in un- 
colored form that which is thought by those who dream 
a forgiveness of sins or of failings on the basis of an 
endeavor to follow Jesus. For whether the law or the 
modern Christ-picfture, they amount to the same, and 
the modern Christ-picfture would at the most make the 
moral demand appear deeper, more comprehensive, 

114 



ANTI-CRITIQUE 



and, therefore, also more difficult. The animation, 
however, which is awakened by such a powerful type 
as Jesus — provided it is awakened at all — will soon 
turn into the desperate and despairing question : ' ' Oh, 
wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me ? ' ' 
Tho the modern Christ may satisfy the current views 
of the cultured, and of all those who absolve them- 
selves, He certainly does not satisfy our wants. Will the 
Christ of the New Testament satisfy them ? 



115 



VII 

FAITH AND HISTORY 



Ml s soon as we approach more closely to the 
** k [ question of the credibility of the evangelical 
BK5? history the very important consideration 
arises : Of what use is a belief in past his- 
tory, since, as far as Christian efficiency is concerned, 
if it is to have security and authority, it depends on 
present truth existing and prevailing from eternity 
and for eternity. At the most we could only have to 
deal with the after-effecfts of a past history, just as we 
enjoy and seek to exhaust our entire civilization life as 
an after-eff edl of the victory of the Greeks at Marathon 
and Salamis over Asiatic tyranny; of the vidlory of the 
Romans over the Carthaginians, and by it over Afri- 
can civilization, or of our [German] victories over 
the French. But if we have to deal only with after- 
eff edls it would be still possible that this Christ-pidture 
does not represent wholly the reality of Christ, and 
our task would not be in any case to try to under- 
stand the reality of Christ. This task would be of 
great historical interest, but for our moral-religious 
life we would have the task of ascertaining and assent- 
ing to those eternal truths which constitute, or should 
constitute, the possession of the truly educated. His- 
torical inquiry might perhaps be able to make some 
things clear, but we are not dependent on our relation 

116 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



to the historical inquiry and to the evangelical history 
belonging to the past. The ever-recurring question, 
1 ' How much in the evangelical accounts is truth and 
what is fidtion? " need not trouble us. 

But if that Christ-pidture obtained through the 
work of criticism does not satisfy, is there quite an- 
other conception, namely, the New Testament Christ- 
pidlure, that will better satisfy our wants, because it 
displays to us historical phenomena and events whose 
after-effe6ls promise more and do more for us than the 
former conception? For Christ is, as they say, a 
person of history ; and persons of history, as well as 
events, only continue to work by their after-effedts 
and in them. This is, indeed, true for persons, and for 
historical events which are nothing else. L^uther con- 
tinues to operate actively and powerfully through the 
word of faith, which he rediscovered, experienced, and 
preached with original force. But there is only an 
after-effedl of his appearance when we believe as he 
believed, when by his word we are awakened and edi- 
fied, strengthened and comforted, even in our last dis- 
tress, and with him can say: 

And tho it tarry the night, 

And round again to morn, 
My heart shall ne'er mistrust Thy might, 

Nor count itself forlorn. 

But Christ is more than a person of history, and just 
on this very account He alone satisfies our needs. I^et 
us look at the matter more closely! 

The path which the disciples walked with Jesus, 
the history which they experienced with Him and in 

117 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Him, were full of mysteries. But when from the end 
they looked back, everything dark became clear. From 
the end — but what point was that ? From His death ? 
There, nothing was clear to them, but everything was 
dark — not only dark, like an unsolved mystery, but 
dark as the hell in Dante, whose gate bears the in- 
scription: "Abandon all hope." What Jesus did to 
them at the end, in the washing of feet and the distri- 
bution of the supper, with the words, " This is my 
body, my blood, for the remission of sins," they 
had indeed received reverently, but they understood 
it not. The enemies, Pharisees, scribes, priests — yes, 
the whole people, incited by them — had delivered Him 
to the Gentiles as one who no more belonged to the 
people of God, and upon whom the highest spiritual tri- 
bunal of Israel had pronounced the sentence of death. 
But the disciples lost all faith when they saw, as it ap- 
peared to them, that Jesus had yielded to the superior 
force and was taken captive. What they ever had in 
Him and hoped of Him was now gone. He was merely 
a man. To be sure, they were not wrong with their 
belief and hope in Him. On the contrary, if any 
one, He alone was able to save the world from sin, 
distress, and death, and they were therefore obliged 
to follow Him. With their belief they were still right 
over against their own people, who had rejected Him. 
But one thing they had not considered, which to-day 
still constitutes the relation of the world to Him : the 
power of sin. "Men loved the darkness rather than 
the light," death rather than life, destruction rather 
than salvation. Therefore, they brought Him to death. 
This conviction of sin they had not expedted. Until 

118 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



the bailiffs had laid hands on Him, they had hoped in 
His vicftory, in His triumph, altho He had foretold 
them otherwise. That " these things must need come 
to pass," " the Son of Man shall be delivered up into 
the hands of men and suffer much and be killed," 
they had not comprehended, and comprehended it not 
even now. On the contrary, when this end came they 
despaired and gave up their hope. No one said: " He 
is nevertheless the Savior, the Messiah ! " Still less: 
" He is even now, tho the crucified One, yea, because 
He is crucified, the Messiah, the Savior." Never- 
theless, He was the Savior. If any one could have 
saved Israel and the whole world it was He. But the 
world refused Him and wished not to be saved by Him, 
and we, we could not be saved, for not even we re- 
mained faithful to Him. Now all is lost! The power 
of sin in the world, also our sin, is too great, so that 
Jesus even could not help. Now we have to expect 
nothing else than God's judgment. He is safe with 
the Father, into whose hands He commended His 
spirit. We, however, are lost — lost forever ! 

This was the impression which the disciples had of 
the sin of the world and of their own sin — a completely 
authorized impression, a sense of their guilt in keep- 
ing with the full truth. And yet it was also un- 
authorized. They should have known that it also 
belonged to the Messiah-way, to the Messiah-calling, 
to the Messiah-task of Jesus to suffer death from those 
for whom and to whom He had come, and on this 
account they should not have despaired, but should 
have waited in faith for that which must come, even 
tho they knew not how it could and must come. Jesus 

119 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

had foretold them everything, but they had compre- 
hended nothing, wished not to comprehend it, and 
believed not. 

This fadrt, the disbelief of the disciples, is of essen- 
tial and primary importance in the question as to 
the veracity or credibility — not of the truth, but of 
the account. Without exception it is confirmed to 
us by all the evangelists, and it shows the complete 
impossibility of such a sudden general change of 
feeling in the circle of the disciples, from perplex- 
ity, fright, despair, into a joy and blessed faith which 
never again left them unless a special event had taken 
place which took away the impression of Jesus' death. 
It is impossible that this change should have been 
brought about, in the few da}^s which they had at their 
command, by some spontaneous resolution of the 
disciples to plunge, with ever greater longing and more 
grateful love, into the pidlure of that Man of whom 
they had expected not only still more but every- 
thing, nevertheless of whom they believed that they 
could now expedl nothing more, and from whom, as 
they had to think, their guilt separated them forever. 
It might be a different matter if Jesus' death had not 
taken place prematurely, and if it had not been brought 
about by hostile force; if the disciples had been look- 
ing forward to the gradual development and formation 
in time of the Messianic work of Jesus, and had now 
been convinced that He still lived, tho in another 
world, in a higher existence, indeed, and therefore also 
lived more efficaciously than before. Even then it was 
inconceivable how this conviction could so quickly and 
generally give rise to the inner experience of * ' appear- 

120 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



ances, ' ' not as of One dead from the other world, but 
of One risen from the dead. That the appearances 
were of a risen One is warranted to us by the testimony 
of the apostle Paul, which points back to the earliest 
time — perhaps into the year of Jesus' death — which 
again confirms the testimonies of the evangelists. But 
even supposing that the ' ' appearance ' ' of the 
heavenly, spiritual, glorified Jesus, quite subjectively 
originated and effeCted, had immediately been substi- 
tuted in place of the appearance of the earthly, bodily, 
now supposedly forever risen Jesus, released from His 
hitherto existing limitations — the suddenness of this 
change in the disposition of the disciples remains never- 
theless inconceivable. For again and again we are told 
of the unbelief of the male and female disciples of Jesus, 
whom Jesus had to reprove and admonish with the 
greatest seriousness. Eight days after the resurrection 
we find Thomas not at all inclined to be influenced by 
his codisciples, but opposing their account with all 
resistance. To him who contradicts his codisciples 
Jesus appears. Thomas must convince himself, and at 
the same time he must hear the words: " Be not faith- 
less but believing. ' ' 

That Thomas would not believe it, after all the 
other disciples had already seen the L,ord, was not 
because he altogether regarded a resurrection as im- 
possible before the last day. Only a few days before 
he had himself witnessed the resuscitation of Iyazarus. 
But that Jesus, whom one of His disciples betrayed, 
whom the people rejected, whom Peter denied, whom 
all disciples deserted, should have risen again ; that 
they, the disciples, who so ignominiously had deserted 

121 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Him, should have Him back again ; that all their sin, 
even their disbelief and the offense which they had 
taken at Him, should no more be remembered ; that 
all should rather be forgiven ; that everything should 
be well again, and all hopes should now be really ful- 
filled — this he could not believe. This he now experi- 
ences through the great mercies of Christ, and with 
the other disciples he can go now and proclaim to the 
world, in the name of this Jesus, the forgiveness of sin 
and the everlasting redemption. "To Him bear all 
the prophets witness, that through His name every one 
that believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins. ' ' 

We ask not for the credibility of the accounts. The 
accounts can be credible — so far their authors are 
thoroughly credible persons and credible reporters — 
and yet what they have experienced they may have 
wrongly understood. There were no eye-witnesses of 
the resurrection ; in this all our accounts agree. Only 
the empty sepulchre is authenticated : by the experi- 
ence of the women who came on the Easter morning 
to anoint the body of Jesus ; by the experience of the 
disciples who on their part afterward went there to 
view the grave and also did not find Him; and by the 
testimony to which the bribery of the keepers and the 
purchase of their silence bears witness in behalf of it. 
But does the fadt of the resurrection now follow from 
this? 

But we are not inquiring after the credibility of this 
facft itself ; for would the knowledge of its credibility 
convince us, anyhow, that we would be forced to be- 
lieve it ? Belief would, all the same, still depend on the 
connection in rational sequence between the resurrec- 

122 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



tion and the entire history of Jesus, so that our rela- 
tion to the history of Jesus would be at the same time 
our relation to the fadl of His resurrection. But we 
have no more to deal with the question as to the credi- 
bility ', but only of the actuality. The credibility of 
the fadl would at the most demonstrate the rationality 
of its acknowledgment. But of what avail is to us 
the acknowledgment of the fac5t, if it stands in no con- 
nexion with the acknowledgment of Jesus Himself, 
and with His history in its eternal importance for us 
and our salvation ? 

Now it is of the greatest significance that the risen 
One Himself insists that His disciples ought to have 
been certain of His resurrection. In consequence of 
their communication with Him, and of all that they 
have hitherto heard and learned of Him, and of 
all they had hoped through their belief in Him, 
they should not have deserted Him, they should not 
have despaired, but should have waited patiently and 
undismayed and unconfounded during the Sabbath for 
His resurrection. This they did not do, and for this 
He reproaches them. There was no one any more in 
the world who still believed in Him. True, that they 
still remembered Him, and recolledted the hours when 
His glory shone into their hearts and transported them 
with hope. They still loved Him, if one may call such 
remembering, especially such painful remembering, 
love, but — they loved Him without faith , they loved 
Him as one dead, from whom their sin separated them. 
* ' We hoped that it was He who should redeem Israel. ' ' 
Yes, we hoped ! This is over now, through the guilt 
of the world and through our guilt. We believe no 

123 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

more and we hope no more ; our sin and the world's 
sin is so great that even Jesus could not save us. 
Nothing is left but God's judgment ! 

Everything would indeed have been and remained as 
a memory of the past, provided the disciples had been 
right, provided Jesus had not actually returned from 
death, had not risen. They were indeed right with 
their idea of a judgment on their sin and the world's. 
They knew themselves to be under the weight of 
their guilt, of their sinful personal life that was so 
completely estranged from the love of God and Jesus, 
and under this weight they could not bend deep 
enough. But now Jesus has returned from death, and 
not this alone. It might have been indeed so as they 
feared when they received through the angels the 
first news of Jesus' resurrection : He might have 
come back to execute judgment over the world. But 
not for judgment had Jesus been sent by the Father 
into the world, not for judgment had He now been 
raised by the Father. Here is the unity, the harmo- 
nious relations of the resurrection of Jesus with His 
life and work. This was the great thing which the 
disciples experienced : Jesus' return to His own who 
had forsaken Him, His return into the world which 
had rejected Him. This they had not imagined, and 
yet they could and should have imagined it had they 
considered all their sin, and the great pardoning love 
and patience and miracles of Jesus and the words which 
He had spoken with them of His suffering and death. 
It was not necessary to commit the sin with which they 
crowned all sin. It was done, and Jesus had borne it 
also. Now the disciples experienced how great a 

124 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



sin the love and the love-power of the Father and of 
Jesus covered ; now they understood that they could 
have believed when they had abandoned belief, and 
that they now, all the same, can believe in Him and be 
forever right in their belief. They understood that 
they were sent out into all the world to preach and to 
bring to it the forgiveness of sins and thus the ever- 
lasting redemption. The whole greatness of the miracle 
that had taken place arose to them with their insight 
into their redemption, which fell to their lot when, as 
they believed, they had incurred everlasting perdition. 
We understand that they could not abandon their faith 
while they lived, and, as Paul writes in the beginning 
of the Epistle to the Romans, they preached the Gos- 
pel as the Gospel of the Son of God, " who was de- 
clared to be the Son of God with power, according to 
the spirit of holiness by the resurredlion of the dead. ' ' 
But this is not all. There is yet a mystery which 
requires explanation, and whose solution only dis- 
closes to us the whole importance of the resurrec- 
tion. The disciples had sinned by their unbelief as 
Israel had not sinned. " Had the rulers of this world 
known the hidden wisdom of God they would not 
have crucified the Lord of glory/ ' says Paul ; and 
Peter, who in the strongest manner called the Jews 
traitors and murderers of the Holy One of God, 
adds : ' ' And now, brethren, I wot that in ignorance ye 
did it." Israel's sin was not so great and heavy as 
that of the disciples, whom Jesus had so long, so 
earnestly, so lovingly, so powerfully united to Himself. 
On this account the disciples, to whom the risen One 
had brought forgiveness, could preach this forgiveness 

125 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

also to Israel — yes, to the whole world. They did this, 
and set forth the forgiveness, not as merely possible 
but as an a<ftual forgiveness, procured through Christ's 
suffering and death, and accomplished by His resusci- 
tation, now offered by the word of preaching or by the 
Gospel. It is true, many refused and declined. They 
have not kept back the f a6l that God raised Jesus from 
the dead and gave Him to be made manifest * ' not to 
all the people but unto witnesses that were chosen be- 
fore of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with 
Him after He rose from the dead." As we already 
said, they never proclaimed that those who might be- 
come and intended to become believers should also 
see Him, as they, the apostles, had seen Him. Still 
less did they think it necessary thus to see Him, in 
order to see Him in a spiritual reality and become a 
believer. Of those who became believers, none desired 
to see the risen One and to have an experience like 
Saul on the way to Damascus. To those who believed, 
it was certain that Jesus had risen from the dead, 
and that He did not merely pass over into eternal life, 
like those who die happily, but that He had returned 
forever into our life, into our communion, and now 
belongs to us through His resurrection and for all 
eternity. With them it was a matter of fa6l. They 
did not understand that we should believe Him as 
we believe concerning parents, teachers, the prophets, 
the apostles, who had passed away long ago, and whose 
words only we now have ; but that we can believe in 
Him, can build our hope and trust on Him, can speak 
with Him, can pray to Him as to a living One. They 
proclaimed Him as the risen One, who did not go to 
126 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



His place through death, but who had come back a 
vidlor over death and Hades, whom death could not 
hold, and who is now the living One, the Prince of I<ife, 
exalted to the right hand of God. From thence, after 
the Gospel has been preached in the whole world, He 
shall come again to judge and to establish His Kingdom. 
To believe in One who died and who existed in a 
higher world was not possible then, nor is it now. Of 
the return of such a One from heaven no one could by 
any means think. The belief in Jesus was belief in 
Him who has been dead, who had died and had become 
alive again ; to whom, being dead, now belonged 
the past, according to His word : "I was dead, and, 
behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys 
of death and of Hades.' ' 

This was by no means a mere recollection of one 
dead. It was not a reestablishment of belief in one 
dead, whom they had given up in the first bewilder- 
ment over His death. It was fat th in a living One 
who died and whom death had, nevertheless, been 
forced to give back. One may believe those who died, 
but one can not belive in them. One can not believe 
in Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, nor in David, Paul, or 
IyUther, because they can not help us ; they can only 
show, or tell us, how they believed, in whom and what 
they believed. But one can believe in Jesus. One, 
indeed, might think he could objecft to the fa<ft of the 
resurrection of Jesus on the ground that Jesus had not 
appeared again in a mortal body and did not continue 
to live in a mortal body. One might urge that on this 
account the question can not be of a real, bodily resur- 
rection, but that resurrection is only a figurative 

127 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

expression for the blessed change which took place 
with Jesus, a change for which another expression, 
tho, after all, also figurative, is even better — the word 
1 ' exaltation. ' ' But Paul as little thought of our future 
resurrection as an ' ' exaltation ' ' as he thought thus of 
the resurrection of Jesus. He regarded the body that 
Jesus received as being just as little mortal as the 
future body we shall receive again in the resurrec- 
tion. "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in 
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immor- 
tality.' ' The resuscitations of the dead which Jesus 
accomplished were only signs and testimonies of a 
better resurrection, of a future complete abolishing of 
death through Him, and this complete abolishing of 
death He first experienced in Himself. He went forth 
from the grave as the vidlor whom death could not 
hold, still less could subdue a second time — yet He was 
the same who was put into the grave, for He showed 
to Thomas His wounds and the print of the nails to 
convince him that it was Himself. He came to His 
own to convince them of the truth, greatness, and 
completeness of His love, which covers the whole great 
multitude of the sins of all. He again belonged to 
them. But He did not belong to a world in which the 
same fight and struggle arises ever and ever again, and 
where ever anew is kindled the fires of it. He has 
fought out this fight, which among us shall endure till 
the Gospel is preached to the last soul. Then only 
will the time come for Him to appear again, to come 
in His entire glory. Now He still has patience, and, 
therefore, waits for those who shall learn to believe. 
Have we learned ? This is now the question. Have 

128 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



we learned to believe as the disciples ought to have 
believed, even before Jesus rose ? No ; for our belief 
is only effedted through the power of God, who raised 
Jesus from the dead ; yes, for as the disciples learned 
that they could have believed, so we learn that we can 
believe. We may come to the conviction that Jesus 
is risen, and risen for our salvation, and for His justi- 
fication by the Father, through the account in which 
this fa6t is communicated, and even more through 
the consistency of the entire testimony about Jesus. 
Everything which is said to us about Him, of His 
baptism and temptation, of His preaching and teach- 
ing and miracles, of His transfiguration and of His 
suffering and death, all stands together with His resur- 
rection as one unitary whole, so that we can not do 
otherwise than believe in this Jesus as One who is 
living, and who lives for us. Therefore, we believe 
in Him as the risen One. Either He is the risen One, 
or we get an entirely different picture of Him — that 
pidture whose entire insufficiency we have already 
represented to ourselves. 

But, granting that the faith offered to us, and worked 
in us by the Gospel, is a faith in the risen One, a ques- 
tion remains which, as we said before, is not yet set- 
tled. It is this : Why did not the apostles, why has 
not any one in Christendom, demanded as necessary 
to a belief in Jesus that one must see the risen One 
as these witnesses did? We have already said that 
Jesus is more, much more, than a personage of his- 
tory. He is, as it is called, a superhistorical phenom- 
enon. He entered into history, into our history, but 
He has not left us again, and referred us to His after- 

129 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

effects. He still lives, not merely has lived ; He died, 
He revived again, and ascended into heaven ; but He 
lives, and wherever His Gospel is preached He is 
actually known and experienced as living — a fact 
which, as may be supposed, is only admitted by those 
who believe, and is naturally opposed and denied by 
those who do not. He is preached unto us : all that 
He did, spoke, suffered ; all that happened to Him. 
All this concerns us ; it is for us the Gospel. Hear- 
ing it, we have, after all, to deal with Himself. We 
do not have merely a lively realization of His per- 
son and His words which is dependent on the art 
of presentation, or the warmth or the faithfulness 
by which the narrator succeeds in allowing the Lord 
to speak for Himself. The art may be insignifi- 
cant, but the Lord speaks and treats with us Himself. 
The art may be great and may attract us, while Jesus 
still remains far from us. It is not that we transfer 
ourselves into the time of His earthly life, but rather 
that we are transferred, not only into that distant 
time, but into actual proximity to Him — into His very 
presence. That is a wonderful effect which proceeds 
from the preaching about Jesus (not merely from the 
words of Jesus), an effect which no other word has, 
not even that which is said to us of everlasting, un- 
changeable truths and laws. Let the words of our 
poets and thinkers touch us again and again ; let them 
open to us depths of thought and feeling which other- 
wise we would not guess — yes, let them cause us to 
perceive, in many cases, the very great abyss of our 
sinful corruption — still is this by no means like the 
words about Jesus that come even from simple lips. 
130 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



The former have no vital power, no power of eternal 
life. At the most they give us only something, but not 
everything. They are perishable words. The Word 
about Jesus (not merely the Word of Jesus) is a Word 
of life; it makes us not only feel the breath of eternity 
in the midst of time, it transfers us into the life of 
eternity. How can that be ? Is it because it treats of 
eternal life, and thereby brings us into touch with the 
same ? Is it because it treats of wonderful love, and 
thereby works in us a premonition of how blessed it 
must be thus to be loved? Even then, like a word 
about strange countries and men, it would still be only 
a word about that which, while true, is not essential ; 
it is not the living Word. We well know this differ- 
ence. Many a one preaches the truth, and honestly 
endeavors to preach Jesus ; what he says is corredl. 
But it is not all. Somehow the main thing is wanting. 
He preaches not Jesus. But at length he finds Jesus, 
lays hold of Him, preaches Him, and then at once an 
effedt of His Word is felt. It is not the effedt which 
he desires, not everywhere the same blessed effect, not 
everywhere the effedt of a quick, sure, and complete 
decision on the part of the hearer. Again, another 
preaches Christ without himself having Christ, and the 
Word works. It is not the word of the preacher, who 
understands not, who comprehends not the effedt at all. 
We ask : What is the explanation of this ? 

After He was risen and the disciples had Him 
again, everything which they had preserved of Him 
in their recollection became different. Till then, indeed, 
it had been to them, in these last days of his earthly 
life, a treasure which they could enjoy, but — without 

131 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

really having anything. That period which they had 
spent with Him had been the most beautiful time of 
their life, in spite of the earnest words which they 
had been obliged to hear so often. They had seen 
great things, heard great things, and learned to hope 
and to expedl still greater things. Then the hour 
came in which everything collapsed ; when they low- 
ered Jesus into the grave they sunk with Him in the 
grave all their hopes. They remembered the Sermon 
on the Mount, they recalled His words: "I am 
the light of the world/ ' u Iam the bread of life," 
' ' If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink, ' ' 
" Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." 
All this was now of no use, everything was gone. 
But after He was risen all these words became alive 
again, for He Himself was living who had spoken 
them and about whom they were spoken. He was 
alive, never to die again; alive for them, the disciples, 
to whom He had returned, not to destroy them, but 
to forgive and save them. He was alive for the whole 
world, to which He belongs forever, and He sent 
His disciples out to preach to it the Gospel. Now they 
knew only what they had learned from Jesus Himself. 
His words had again authority. He stood by them. 
He had said and He said it again, and it was and is 
of good effedt: "I am"— not "I was"— "The 
Bread of Life," "The Light of the World," "The 
Good Shepherd." He had said, and it had au- 
thority again, and is authority unto eternity : " Him 
that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out," " Come 
unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest. ' ' He said — and it was and is eter- 
132 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



nal truth and reality— " I,o, I am with you alway, 
even unto the end of the world,' ' "I am the vine, 
ye are the branches,' ' " Apart from Me ye can do 
nothing, with Me everything," "Whatsoever ye shall 
ask in My name, that will I do." Now only the dis- 
ciples experienced the whole full power of these words, 
because He who had spoken them was risen. "Jesus 
Christ, the same yesterday and to-day and forever, ' ' 
who keeps His word now and in eternity, fulfils His 
promises, offers Himself to those who hear such words, 
gives Himself to those who believe such promises, treats 
with those also to whom the disciples bring His name. 
This is the power not only of the words of Jesus, but 
of the words about Jesus. The risen One, over whom 
death has now no more power, and for whom exists 
no more any bounds of space and time, stands since 
then by His Word, and the Word about Him> and on 
this account it is a living Word in the proper and fullest 
sense of the term. With His presence He covers the 
Word by which His own testify of Him. It is indeed 
a wondrous, a paradoxical Word through and through, 
an incredible Word, the Word of our, the sinners', re- 
demption, of our pardon, of our eternal life. It is the 
contrary of all self-demonstrative truth. How is it 
possible to believe it ? It is a Word that expresses no 
truth which the more serious and deeper mind of man 
would perceive as proved in the natural constitution 
of things, but rather the truth which stands in oppo- 
sition to the natural constitution of things, the con- 
trary of all that which logical and morally consistent 
thinking can tell us. How shall it be possible to know 
and acknowledge it as truth, to believe it? 

133 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

The fatal mistake which has been committed, and 
which Harnack committed in the extremest form, is 
the supposition that by such criticism as his the 
tenor of the Gospel is purged of its paradoxical 
character, which obliges its followers to put them- 
selves in opposition to all logical and moral con- 
sistency while they yet retain the paradox, not 
always perceived to be such, that is found in the 
relation of freedom to the constraint of the law of 
nature. We have not, however, to deal with this 
paradox of the Divine freedom, which in all respects 
follows the same line of possibility as that by which 
our freedom proves itself over against the constitution 
of nature. The paradox we have to consider is that 
of free grace over against our sin and sinfulness. 
From Harnack' s standpoint one must estimate sin as 
an unavoidable product of our finitude. Guilt is heavy 
only accordingly as the offense is heavy, and guilt and 
the excuse for it are again and again placed together. 
For the same reason, from Harnack' s standpoint, one 
must regard the doings of God only as a consistent 
consequence of the rightly perceived essence of God, 
as the loving Father, the provider and leader of His 
creatures. Jesus, in their view, is to be regarded as 
one who made us free from the error of those concep- 
tions of God hitherto existing, and mediated a knowl- 
edge of the kindness and love of God which we now 
know and believe, and upon which we now live. As 
Harnack expresses it : ' * Only the Father, not Jesus, 
belongs in the Gospel." 

It is true, indeed, that Jesus does not belong in that 
to which Harnack has reduced the Gospel. Yet that 

134 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



word is not quite correct. Let us rather say, Jesus 
does not belong in the Gospel that Harnack has con- 
structed, and in which he has only borrowed words 
from the Gospel about Christ and from the Gospel of 
Christ, which have now, however, received quite 
another meaning. The Gospel of the New Testament 
is for Harnack a paradox which surpasses all his notions 
of paradox, and on this very account he disputes it. 
He is not concerned with the question of redemption 
that delivers us from death and damnation — words 
that express in the only consistent sense the facft of 
our being lost from sin and guilt, which from our 
birth have become part of us or of which we are a part 
— but he knows only a redemption which abolishes 
the power of error, and thereby the power of sin, for 
error is not sin, but sin is rather error. Harnack 
needs in his view only knowledge, which determines 
the will, and suggestion, which draws us along into 
the right paths. Thus he needs merely a Jesus who 
not only in life but also in death is and remains what 
we are, except that He was not in degree w 7 hat we are, 
but is set before us that we may not remain as w^e are, 
but submit ourselves to be raised from error to truth 
by His knowledge and His religion and piety. For, 
according to the proposition of Harnack and others, 
nothing that ever appeared in history goes beyond the 
measure of the human. 

But how may the paradox of the New Testament 
Gospel, the Gospel of Christ and the Gospel about 
Christ not be overcome, for this is impossible, but be 
acknowledged as truth, as saving truth, and as eternal 
truth? Only by this: that Jesus Himself by His 

135 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

presence protedts His Word. As the living One, and 
therefore as one who is present, He tells us the Word 
of severity and also the Word of His wondrous, incom- 
prehensible love. When the question is of His love, 
of the works and the miracles and the power of love, 
and of the mercy and patience which He has shown to 
sinners, to the paralytic, the great sinner, the pub- 
lican, and even to a Peter, we know by an inward ex- 
perience not that this was He, but that this is He ! 
When we hear of the paradox of His incomprehensible 
love which will even save the prodigal son, we 
should be afraid of the sin of saying: " Jesus received 
sinners"; we must say: " Jesus receives sinners. " 
Everything which is recorded of Him, of His work 
and sayings, of His patience and suffering, of His 
death and resurrection, of His entire history, is not 
history merely, it is an immanent, real, living presence, 
and not merely a realization of His past. He is to- 
day what He was then, the same whom men not 
only resisted then, but still resist, and to-day He still 
endures the resistance, our resistance, and rewards it 
with pardoning grace. The like of this we do not find 
elsewhere in the whole world, in the entire connection 
of things. Of course we do not, for there is only one 
Jesus, who once appeared in the ongoing of history to 
take away the sins of many, and that which He did 
for us and does on us He and only He does; and it is 
not to be wondered at, therefore, that this, His work, 
and with it His existence, go beyond the measure of 
the human ; for, no one can redeem besides Him; 
such redemption is far beyond all the abilities of man. 
That the fabrication of His history, as some phrase it, 

136 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



and His marvelous Gospel did not originate from such 
reflection over that which is possible or impossible, but 
that this reflection is rather only an effecft of His 
wondrous redemption, is a statement needing no proof. 
Jesus is present where His Word is preached, His 
name is acknowledged, His love is praised. This we 
feel, and with it we feel that He is more than a person- 
age of history. He is, indeed, a personage of history, of 
our history. But He is more than this ; He is super- 
historical. He entered into history, and was des- 
tined to be separated again from the ordinary course 
of humanity and its history. For this He was killed, 
suffered the death which was inflidled on Him. But 
He endured it as the One who was to attain thereby 
His objeEl. He attained it by dying for us, for our 
benefit and not to our injury, and by rising again from 
the dead and by belonging to us forever — the helper 
whom the two greatest w r orld-powers, sin and death, can 
not separate from us. He not only became alive then, 
but has lived ever since, and everything that He was, 
as He lived before, lives again with Him. This ex- 
plains not only the peculiar impression which we have 
from the uniqueness of the Word about Him, but the 
unique effect which the Word about Him still exer- 
cises. It brings the Gentiles to that point to which 
it brought the first Christians — namely, of becoming 
people ' ' who call upon the name of Jesus, ' ' who do and 
speak the highest deeds and words which a man can 
possibly do and speak, and wherein the whole being, 
soul, and heart express themselves. Or was this pray- 
ing, this calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus, only 
superstition, the aberration, excusable or inexcusable, of 

137 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

those who believed in Jesus and thought that faith in 
Jesus and prayer to Jesus belonged together ? Whoever 
dislikes the designation of Jesus as of the t ' superhistor- 
ical ' ' can give it up as soon as he has found a better 
one ; but Jesus differs from all persons of history 
in that He is not a man who merely once existed, but 
is living, who to-day still lives and a6ls ; this facft re- 
mains, and in this consists the mystery of the effi- 
ciency of the Gospel. To be sure, just this is denied 
by those who make Jesus only a man of history who, 
as they admit, certainly has done more and is of more 
importance to-day to humanity than any of those to 
whom humanity owes its best. But that His super- 
historical nature is denied is, in accordance with what 
we have said before, not only comprehensible, but to 
be expected. Nor is it strange that the contest is 
made not only with vehemence and haughty presump- 
tion, as by Hackel, but with an array of scientific 
skill, and with the whole weight of the appeal to the 
laws of the firmly established constitution of nature 
and history in which we live. It is conceded that this 
world-order does not rule out, as by brute force, every- 
thing which goes beyond physical necessity, but it is 
not conceded that a man like ourselves can influence 
this fixed order by his freedom, nor that God can work 
differently than by a wise governing of this constitu- 
tion of things to prove His providence. Over against 
this we can again and again only refer to the great 
problem : " Oh, wretched man that I am ! who shall 
deliver me out of the body of this death ? ' ' which is 
not solved by the supposed paradox of our freedom, but 
only by the great paradox of Divine freedom, the free- 

138 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



dom of His grace and mercy, which made Jesus die for 
our sin, and raised Him for our justification. Who- 
ever will be done with sin and guilt by the way of in- 
tellect, let him try it. If he tries it honestly and 
seriously, he must and will arrive at this paradox, which 
at last can only be believed. 

This is the connection between history and faith. 
We also believe in everlasting truths, in the existence 
of God, in a moral order of the world, in the invio- 
lability of the moral law, and can retain these truths 
in no other way than by a voluntary acceptance — i.e., 
in faith. In all our life we are restricted to faith ; as 
some one has said : ' ' By faith only has man a father 
and mother ; by faith only has he a friend.' ' For just 
this best thing in life, the love of others, demands our 
faith. Whoever will not believe can misinterpret 
everything. But this kind of belief and our Christian 
belief differ, nevertheless, very essentially. With this 
ordinary belief I believe only what is rational — what I 
perceive as truth with my reason, tho it is not always 
necessary that the objeCt of faith should really exist. 
I or any other can withdraw from the acknowledg- 
ment at his own risk. He need neither believe in the 
existence of God nor in the validity of any moral law; 
he can refuse for himself the demand upon love, 
whose existence he does not acknowledge in others. 
Only in such a belief, voluntarily adopted, am I sure 
of the eternal law which concerns us all, of everlasting 
judgment, of my inviolable duty, and of my being lost 
forever. For this alone is rational, nothing contra- 
dicts it, and it finds nothing itself which it contradicts 
than the want of willingness on our part to entertain it. 

139 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

But what Christianity demands of us and offers us is, 
that we connedl with this faith, at the same time, the 
faith in its contrary : with the belief in our sin, our 
guilt, and our judicial imprisonment, the belief in our 
pardon and our redemption ; with the belief in God's 
eternal order of justice, the belief in His equally eter- 
nal love. This is not the demand that we now seek 
an adjustment between these apparently contrary fadls, 
nor that we must know how both are authorized and 
can exist side by side with each other, nor that we 
should understand that that only is the right and deep- 
est thinking and the only corredl knowledge which 
has apprehended the necessary unity of both. Here 
no necessary unity obtains at all. No premise, no 
antecedent requires it. God is free, absolutely free. 
He condemns, and therein adts justly. He pardons 
and justifies the impious, and no one can say that He 
a<£ts unjustly. 

The difference between that faith which Christianity 
presupposes (tho it often becomes vital only where 
Christianity has already acquired a footing) and the 
faith which Christianity offers to us is this : In Chris- 
tianity we have to deal with an historical attitude of 
God. We not only believe that we are sinners and 
that w T e are lost, as Christianity presupposes, but we 
are also to believe that God loved and loves us, and 
did and does everything that we might not perish. 
We are to believe in a God who historically adled for 
us and adts with us, after we have historically departed 
from His ways, from the everlasting right and law, and 
have put ourselves in opposition to Him. Our histor- 
ical condudl is the presupposed occasion for the his- 

140 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



torical condudl of God, which stands before our eyes 
in Christ, which became reality in Christ and since 
then is and has superhistorical reality. True, God's 
thoughts are everlasting thoughts ; they are from 
eternity for eternity. But His thoughts toward our 
redemption have their presupposed occasion — our con- 
dudl, our sin — and God's condudl in the sending of 
His Son is not to serve for the furtherance and the 
securing of our development, but is to redeem us from 
our false development, our sin and guilt, and counter- 
act its consequences. Besides, we can believe in the 
historical condudl of God only when it has entered into 
history, and then has become for us as present con- 
dudl. The significant f adl is that we are released from 
the ban under which eternal law and right and truth 
have placed us on account of our historical condudl. 
We can not lift this weight merely by the knowledge 
that the eternal love of God is still higher and that 
this is equally eternal truth. By that supposition the 
whole seriousness and the entire truth and power of 
our knowledge of sin would be abolished. It is a fadl 
that in the same degree in which my sin loses its mean- 
ing for me, in the same measure or in a still higher 
measure also vanishes my interest in the grace of God, 
and so in the condudl of God, and with it my interest 
in faith. Only the interest of opposition to the Gospel, 
then, keeps the discussion alive, and preserves an ap- 
pearance of interest in the matter. Only that Gospel 
exercises real power which makes known to us a condudl 
of God, which in absolute freedom had mercy upon us, 
which entered into our history, interfered with it, and 
has now become a lasting presence. Upon this view 

141 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

nothing is denied which should be affirmed. The in- 
violableness of the eternal truth and the law of God, 
the whole greatness of our sin and guilt, the facft of 
our being lost — everything is acknowledged unreserv- 
edly ; sc acknowledged that our sin appears ever 
clearer, ever greater, ever heavier : ' ' That thou never 
open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when 
I have forgiven thee all " (Ezekiel xvi : 63). At the 
same time, our faith becomes ever more grateful and 
fervent, more inward, quiet, and deep. 

This is, in reality, the harmony between faith and 
history. We can not be quite deprived of history, be- 
cause we need historical and, at the same time, lasting 
reality. The redemption being at hand and offered to 
us, we see and know its nature, and can understand 
that this is the only way by which we could or can be 
helped. And this Divine grace, which is at the same 
time history and eternity, stands before us in the resur- 
rection of Jesus. By that everything that concerns 
Him — His humility for our sake — became a present, 
enduring reality. He could not by force lay claim to 
acknowledgment without destroying us and the whole 
world. His patience, with which He endured the hard- 
ness of the human heart, and again and again showed to 
them nothing but love, tho he had to chide them and 
did chide them ; His innocent and patient suffering 
and death, tho He had the power to defend Himself by 
one word against the whole world and to destroy it — all 
this is now enduring, present reality in Him who offers 
Himself to us as the One who was crucified and 
rose again. Every word still has authority, and is 
to-day His word to our hearts. This is not because 

142 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



He was dead and remained in death, it is not because 
He was dead and was transferred to a higher existence, 
like those who are saved but can no more speak 
to us, and whose words are now only of importance 
for us so far as they point us to another One who 
is able to help us. His words have authority because 
He was dead and became alive, and now has the keys 
of hell and death. Because He gave Himself to us 
He still gives Himself to us, and gives Himself to 
every one to whom His word comes. In having Him 
I have my redemption, because I have the Redeemer. 
Since I have and hold Him, my life is a life through 
Him, a life in Him, a work in cooperation with Him. 
Living or dying we are His, the living Savior's own. 
We know, then, and can say : " He died for me and 
lives for me." "The old man," as Paul says, "is 
crucified with Him," and my life has become new. 
" I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me ; 
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in 
faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved 
me, and gave Himself up for me." "In Christ we 
have, I have, the redemption through His blood, the 
forgiveness of sins." John, however, writes : "That 
which we have seen and heard declare we unto 
you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us: 
yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His 
Son Jesus Christ. ' ' And so we must say that our Lord 
Christ is not a man who once existed, but who is pres- 
ent ; not one who died happily, but the author of our 
salvation, and all this because He rose from the dead. 
Thus, all depends on the fa<5t of His resurrection. 
If He is not risen not even Harnack is right, but then 

143 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

everything is lost, and all efforts and all hopes are 
dreams — nothing but dreams. That He is risen is not 
made certain to us by any account, tho it were ever 
so carefully received and preserved. But as the dis- 
ciples had no need to experience the resurrection first, 
or, rather, to see the risen One, so we, too, ought to be 
certain of the resurrection by that which we experience 
of Him, by His life, which we perceive. We are not 
to believe in Jesus on account of His resurrection, but 
we believe His resurrection because we believe in 
Jesus ; and we believe in Jesus because we experience 
Him in His word and in the Word about Him. We 
experience that He speaks to our troubled soul : 
" Be of good cheer, I have bought thee with a price ! " 
We experience that He is the only One — He in whom 
we can trust for time and eternity. Let one call this 
mysticism, nevertheless the experience exists. We ex- 
perience His word : ' ' Blessed are they that have not 
seen and }^et have believed ; and we learn to lay hold 
of Him whom we see not as if we saw Him. ' ' Looking 
backward from His resurrection, as did the disciples, 
we obtain the understanding of all mysteries of His 
person and history. It is with this understanding 
that His person and history ought to be exhibited in 
place of the many so-called historical ' ' Lives of Jesus ' ' 
which have appeared since 1835. 

To be sure, the one thing that it is necessary for us 
to know and understand is that Jesus will save sin- 
ners. Our faith is morally conditioned. He who 
denies the knowledge and acknowledgment of His sin 
as Jesus demands and effeCts it — and one can deny it 
— will never come to a belief in the risen One. First 

144 



FAITH AND HISTORY 



of all, there can be and there are other reasons which 
render this belief difficult. For it must, indeed, be 
acknowledged by us that this faith stands in keen 
opposition to all which is otherwise possible in the 
orderly ongoing of history, that the proposition of the 
resurrection of Jesus is the most incredible thing 
imaginable, or at all events a proposition than which 
there can be only one that is a more incredible f acfl — the 
fa dl of our redemption. But all these reasons against it 
finally recede before one final consideration — namely, 
our sin and its consequences, our guilt, death, and per- 
dition. It must be determined by us whether we will 
know and acknowledge the living and consequently 
the risen Christ or not. In the first place, it is our 
intellect which renders the believing more difficult to 
us; finally, however, the decision is determined by our 
will. It is not as if our will conditioned and effected 
our faith ; our volition effedts the disbelief, whereas 
Jesus by His presence effedls the faith. One can be 
unbelieving, and blameless, tho unhappy, like Thomas, 
but one can remain unbelieving only with a bad con- 
science. 



145 




VIII 

THE PERSON OF CHRIST 

J? now hath Christ been raised from the dead, 
the first-fruits of them that are asleep, as 
we also shall some day rise. But He is not 
merely the first by the resurredtion of the 
dead, as Paul expresses himself at another time, but 
He is ' ' The Author of our Redemption, " " The Prince 
of Life, " " The Author of our Salvation. ' ' For it was 
the Savior chosen and given by God who had been 
crucified, the Messiah. That He really was and is 
the Messiah became manifest to the disciples, and He 
became a power for them through His resurrection, 
and that power is now to be manifested to the whole 
world through the risen One, who confirms the words 
of His disciples by His presence in the power of the 
Holy Spirit. The resurrection is the Divine justifica- 
tion of Jesus, the installation hitherto opposed into the 
rank of His Messiahship, into His position of author- 
ity. As Peter says : l ' Let all the house of Israel there- 
fore know assuredly that God hath made Him both 
Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified" 
(Adts ii : 36). The Lord is Christ, because He has to 
speak and command as Messianic King, into whose 
hand the Father hath given all things, to whom all 
power is given in heaven and on earth. He is the 
Lord, not because by His influence He unites us to 
Himself, and thus is the first-fruits and the center of 

146 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



all believers, not because He held His place and re- 
mained Lord of the world, when it sought to overcome 
Him in His inward life by the suffering which it 
caused to Him. He is not the Lord, as we shall be- 
come and remain lords over the world to triumph over 
it, instead of allowing it to triumph over us with its 
power. Tho David's son, He is yet David's Lord — 
Lord over the King of Israel ; His throne stands above 
the throne of that King. He is Lord as having a 
unique Messianic and, therefore, Divine superiority. 
He determines all things, and, therefore, our eternal 
destiny, as He assured Himself to be able to do in the 
closing passages of the Sermon on the Mount. In 
short, He is the Lord, to whom we pray, as is indi- 
cated in the oldest name of the Christians, ' * who call 
upon the name of the Lord Jesus.' ' 

But if He is this and is experienced by us as One 
present with us who still is what He was, then He is 
not merely our brother. He is something that none 
of our brothers is or can be, and something which no 
man can be — at the same time our God and Lord. 
We have the most pressing interest in the facft that He 
is what we are, wholly man, man like us, born to die, 
but the interest which is far greater than any interest 
which we can take in a man depends on this : that this 
man, this Jesus, is also our God and Lord. God and 
Lord He is, and yet our brother, wholly our brother, 
wholly ours. This is the great God and Lord, and yet 
our flesh and blood, and through flesh and blood mem- 
ber of our race. Could we say this of Him if He only 
were man, as we are ? Were it not blasphemy to call 
a man God, as the heathenish Romans called their 

147 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

emperors, yes, even their teachers, their philosophers, 
' ' Deus ac Dominus noster ' ' f This no Jew and no Chris- 
tian — at the least, a disciple of Jesus, like Paul and 
John — could ever bring to their lips. Jesus, however, 
stands before us wholly as our equal, and yet more 
than our equal, who, however, will be no more than 
we, but will forever belong to us, to share with us 
everything that He is and has. All His goods, His 
whole being, is to be ours. 

That such is the case follows from the already con- 
sidered fa6l that He enters into our life not as the 
departed but as the living — speaks with us, deals with 
us, produces faith in us. It is He who offers Himself 
to us that we should have in Him redemption, the 
forgiveness of our sins. He gives Himself to us, 
God gives Him to us, that He, and through and with 
Him, God's full grace and God's whole kingdom 
may belong to us. This we may indeed deny, but 
only as we can deny all moral powers interfering with 
our life. As real as our sins, which are indeed no 
mere fancy; as real as our sense of guilt, which is just 
as little fancy; as real as death and judgment, these 
startling realities that are already felt by us before- 
hand, because they are already present reality — so real 
is the forgiveness of sins through Christ. In no other 
man do we have this; in Jesus, and, indeed, in Jesus 
who died and rose again, we have it because He is 
man and therefore our brother. The child in the 
manger at Bethlehem, the man on the cross on Cal- 
vary, both are ours, not merely were ours. They are 
ours because He rose, and in consequence of that 
there is forgiveness of sins in Him and the full grace 

148 



THK PERSON OF CHRIST 



of God is ours. But this He is, therefore, and this 
we have, therefore, in Him, because it is our God and 
our Lord who became our brother, wholly our brother. 
Thus, none other belongs to us as He belongs to us, 
who has so condescended to us. From the manger 
He is everything that He is for us. He does not be- 
come the Savior, He is a Savior from the beginning, 
and what happens to Him and what He experiences 
and suffers is not that He may become the Savior, but 
because He is the Savior. 

That we pray to One who was, is, and shall be God, 
and therefore never ceased and shall never cease to be 
God, and yet who humbled Himself to be like us, who 
became man in order to suffer because of us, His 
brethren, and at the same time to suffer for us, yes, to 
suffer unto death, became man because He was not to 
judge but to save — all this is called mythology by 
some. But no matter who may call it mythology, it is 
not mythology. It is rather the absolutely free a<ftion 
of the ever-living God, who will live with us and for 
us, will share with us His whole being, will exist for 
us in free, unconstrained love. Being free, He does 
not ac$l merely as some laws of the orderly sequence of 
nature and history a6l, or as the difference between 
God and His creatures conditions the latter's adlions. 
He adls in response to the need of us whom He has 
united not only to nature and history, but, in a 
region transcending these, to Himself. And thus 
He adls as He will, not only without ever ceasing 
to be God, but in a way to prove by His absolute 
freedom His Deity. This, His very freedom and power, 
He proves when He becomes man, and yet as man be- 

149 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

comes our God and our L,ord. We are esteemed of 
Him so highly, so near are we to Him, the nearest to 
His throne in the rank of His creation, that God can 
unite with us wholly and forever, even tho we have 
not remained in fellowship with Him and have not 
walked the path of communion with Him. He be- 
comes man not to exhibit His power, as in the legend 
the gods become men — i.e., assume only the form of 
men to display their power. Nor does He become 
man to exercise as a warrior god His a6ls of power, 
as the heroes of pagan legend. Still less does the man 
Jesus become a god or a demigod, like Hercules and 
Theseus. He becomes man to be wholly man, power- 
less, weak, and poor, to suffer and to die, and thus to 
belong to us in our sins, that He may deliver and 
redeem us. 

The wondrous counter-effedl of God against our sin 
is indeed a miracle, the absolutely inconceivable con- 
trary of that which elsewhere or otherwise takes place 
or can take place. It is a miracle that He became 
man — became man forever, not merely assumed human 
form for a time. It is a miracle that He died and rose, 
which is not to be explained from certain presuppositions 
lying in the established order of nature and history, or 
following from the orderly unity of rational thinking. 
It is all grace, nothing but grace, the freedom of 
the Divine love, which could thus accomplish the 
greatest miracle of all — our redemption and salvation. 
To understand this one must only clearly admit that 
our being lost is a fadl, and eternal Divine justice a 
necessity to which we have to yield, hard as it may be 
for us. Only grace can save us, but it must be in such 

150 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



wise that truth is justified and sin is called and re- 
mains sin. And this takes place in Jesus and through 
Jesus. God becomes our brother, and bears and suffers 
our sins. Doing this, He effedts our pardon. This it 
is which unites us to Him in indissoluble bonds, as we 
now only fully acknowledge our sin and condemn our- 
selves when we see our sin before us in the light of 
His suffering and death. Whoever has perceived, 
believed, experienced the inconceivable miracle, and 
the fa6l of our redemption and salvation, has expe- 
rienced Jesus, and lives in the realization that He 
is ours and belongs to us as no one else can be- 
long to us ; to him the miracle of His resurrection, 
and consequently also the wonder of His incarnation, 
is not too great. "Unto us," yes, "unto us a child 
is born, unto us a Son is given, and his name shall 
be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Ever- 
lasting Father, Prince of Peace ! ' ' We could not be- 
lieve the fadtof our redemption if we did not experience 
Him, the Redeemer, as He stands before us and says : 
* ' I am yours ! I have redeemed thee ! ' ' And we should 
not experience Him had He not risen ; and He could 
not have risen were He not the Messiah, chosen of 
God ; and He were not the Messiah were He not our 
brother and yet our God and L,ord ; and He were not 
this had He not condescended to us, did we not have 
in Him and of Him everlasting grace. 

This is the real order of nature and history. That 
Christ becomes in this order of grace an ' ' irregular 
phenomenon in history ' ' troubles us the less because 
we are ruined by the regularity of phenomena and 
by the law of development. Because Christ is our 

151 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

brother, and on the ground that He is an ' ' irregular ' ' 
appearance in history, only on this account, and pre- 
cisely on that account, we have in Him our redemp- 
tion and can believe in Him. Even our sin is an 
" irregular phenomenon in history " however regularly 
it now occurs. For it has interrupted the harmonious 
order of the work of God, and still interrupts it. It is 
the great perturbation on whose account the regular 
course of nature and history is our irresistible destruc- 
tion. For this phenomenon, the world, with its har- 
monious constitution, is not intended, in order that 
all should perish. But sin destroys everything, and 
were it not for the forbearance of God the world would 
already be destroyed from the beginning, and every- 
thing would be lost past recovery. In the law of 
development, the law of our existence (not by that 
self -direction, according to which we should govern 
ourselves, but in the law which rules over us) , we had 
nothing but the document and seal of our destruction. 
God, however, with the word of His power, and ac- 
cording to the decree of His love, has preserved the 
world, while He allowed sin to become powerful and 
ever more powerful that He might save it through 
Jesus. ' i He hath shut up all unto disobedience that 
He might have mercy upon all ' ' — this is a word which 
must be understood that one may not make a mere 
phantom out of sin and guilt, but may understand that 
only through the incarnation of God a redeemer could 
come. 

But now arises a whole series of questions — among 
them some of such a nature that we can not answer 
them, as, for instance, How is it possible that one can 

152 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



be God and yet other than God, and still the unity of 
God remain ? etc. — questions that can not be answered 
by reference to the union of the will of Jesus with that 
of the Father. But is the acknowledgment of a fa6l 
dependent on the answering of all the questions which 
are connected with it ? Is the acknowledgment of the 
fadl of our sin dependent on the answer which we are 
to give to the question how Satan, to whom our sin is 
referred, became sinful ? Is the acknowledgment of the 
fadl of creation dependent on the question how space 
and time detach themselves from the omnipresence and 
eternity of God ? In all such questions we pass judg- 
ment upon the fadl whose adluality we acknowledge 
from predominant reasons, tho we do not wholly com- 
prehend it. We do not comprehend the fadrt of our con- 
tinuation after death, and yet we are certain of it ; we 
do not comprehend the existence of God, and yet we 
are certain of it; we do not comprehend God's judgment 
and its execution, and yet we are certain of it. The 
denial would have, moreover, quite different incompre- 
hensibilities that would follow. In like manner it is 
with the question as to the unity of God, which can 
not be abrogated because of the difference of God from 
Christ, of the Father from the Son. We only answer : 
* ' God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Him- 
self ; Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our 
behalf. ' ' The proposition adduced against the incar- 
nation that the finite can not contain and include in 
itself the infinite— -finitum non est capax infiniti — is 
unsound, for this is not the question here at all. The 
question is the contrary — namely, whether the infinite 
is capable of the finite, and can include in itself : 

153 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

infinitum est capax finiti. But it is, nevertheless, cor- 
real to affirm that the finite may contain the infinite. 
There is only One who is infinite — God ; and He 
once only entered into this union with the finite by 
the incarnation in Christ. It is entirely wrong to 
think of God's capacity as restricted by a logical law, 
because there also exists a superrational, tho not irra- 
tional, working of God. God's counsel is super- 
rational for the redemption of those who, tho not lost 
according to the law of reason, still are lost. The 
wisdom of God, which has chosen not the wise, the 
noble, the strong, but the foolish things, the weak 
things, the things that are not, is superrational. Super- 
rational, not irrational, is our redemption through the 
Cross. Superrational, not irrational, is our redemption 
through the incarnation of God. 

If this be so, we are not to say that the divinity of 
Christ manifests itself only in His ability, in His moral 
purity, in His miracles, in His power to suffer and to 
die, and yet to rise again. His miracles He performed 
by reason of His extraordinary endowment from the 
Father, as Moses and Elias did before Him. He walked 
without sin, and overcame every temptation, as we 
should, but as we do not ; He suffered and died, be- 
cause He was like us, our brother, and by the resusci- 
tation that occurred to Him, through the power of the 
Father, He became the first-fruits of them that are 
asleep. But if all this is to have something of signifi- 
cance not only for Him but for us, if all this is to 
inure to our benefit, it is because He is the Messiah 
who does it and to whom it happens. And that He is 
and can be the Messiah follows from the facfi that He 

154 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



is our brother, who belongs to us, not as all others, to 
our injury and to theirs (for every one who is born, 
unless he becomes a believing Christian, aggravates 
sin and guilt, and becomes a curse to others, instead of 
a blessing), but for our benefit, because He is forever 
God and Lord. 

He thus became no more than we are, because being 
God He became man. His incarnation is not and does 
not bring about a grading up of the human beyond the 
measure of the human. It is nothing but self-humili- 
ation. He was born that He might die, as we are told 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ii : 14). We all bring 
death with us into the world, so that it is the conse- 
quence of our birth. With Him this consequence was 
at the same time a purpose. This is the difference be- 
tween Him and us. He, the Prince of Life, was born 
that He might die. This is what Paul has in mind 
when he writes of Christ that He, ' ' being in the form 
of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with 
God, but emptied Himself ] taking the form of a serv- 
ant, being made in the likeness of man, and being found 
in fashion as a man, He humbled himself, becoming 
obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. ' ' 
If it were not Jesus to whom we look, if it were not a 
question of making the impossible possible, if all this 
were not a concern of our salvation, if it were not that 
Jesus to whom we can pray, we should not believe it, 
but despair. Now, however, He, our brother, and yet 
our God and Lord, comes before our eyes in this form 
of the suffering One, justified of God through the 
resurrection, proved by the resurrection to be the Son 
of God chosen as Savior. Therefore, we can not do 

155 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

otherwise than express in this apostolic word the 
miracle which we believe. It is no speculation of the 
apostle, set forth as his own, and not to be acknowl- 
edged by us. It is the fadl of our redemption, pur- 
posed of God, proclaimed by Jesus, and therefore 
purchased with His death. He describes, indeed, a 
f a6l which is so wondrous that none would believe it 
unless the presence of Jesus proved it — the presence of 
Him who is both our brother and yet our God and 
Lord. To a similar effect he also says at another time 
(II. Corinthians viii : 9) : " For ye know the grace of 
our Iyord Jesus Christ that, tho he was rich, yet for 
your sakes he became poor, that ye through his pov- 
erty might become rich." 

John, of course, seems to speak differently of the in- 
carnation. He calls Jesus the Word, in whom from 
eternity, already before the foundation of the world, all 
is appointed that God has to say unto us. Through 
Jesus' mediation, therefore, the world is created, which 
from the beginning to this day was and is referred to 
Him, the light of life, the source of all peace for every 
one of us. It is He of whom we need only to think in 
order to have before us everything which God has to 
say to us. But that which God has to say to us, that 
which in the deepest ground of His being He has left for 
us, this in His love He is Himself. He has left Himself 
for us, Himself He will give to us and does give to us by 
giving us His Son. Therefore, He in whom all this 
stands before us as present and forever is from eter- 
nity as God — the Word is God. And of this Word, 
which was before the world was, God in God or to 
God, it is said that it became what we are. The Word 

156 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



beca?7ie flesh, not merely dwelt in the flesh, but it be- 
came flesh — the greatest imaginable contrast, and one 
which we, w r ho are flesh, subjedt to death, would 
hardly dare to express if it were not Jesus of whom 
this is predicated. But He who was God, and to 
whom we are referred from the beginning, through 
whom alone we have and can have the life everlasting, 
thus deeply humbled Himself even unto death, and 
w 7 ent into the realm of the dead, 3-es, and beyond it, 
that He may full}' belong to us. This is the wonder- 
ful fact that flesh, our flesh, the material appearance of 
our being, became to Him the means of belonging to 
us and of proving Himself ours by suffering and death. 
Therefore, it is said in the first espistle of John 
(I.John iv:2, 3): " Every spirit which confesseth 
that Jesus Christ " (the Son of the Father, w 7 ith whom 
we are to have communion with the Father) ' ' is come 
in the flesh n (so that the flesh became the means of 
proving Himself as the Messiah, as Savior) ' ' is of God, 
and every spirit which confesseth not that Jesus Christ 
came into the flesh is not of God." This he says of 
that Jesus of whom he writes at the end of this 
epistle : "This is the true God and eternal life," as 
Paul (Romans ix : 4, 5) says when he praises the pre- 
rogatives of Israel : ' ' Of whom is Christ as concerning 
the flesh, who is over all, God, blessed forever." 

But how does it appear that this is not, after all, the 
opposite conception from that of the apostle Paul? 
Paul speaks of the humiliation, John of the majesty 
and glory of the Word which became flesh. But after 
he has said, " The Word became flesh," he continues : 
" And dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory 

157 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace 
and truth. ! ' Is it not for him the principal thing that 
he saw, not the flesh, but the glory of God in Christ, 
in the Word which became flesh ? ' ' No man hath 
seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son " (who 
is the true Son of the Father in distinction from us, the 
children adopted by grace), " He hath declared him." 
Upon this phrase I pause to remark that, according to 
the connection, as far as I see, the reading, "The 
only begotten Son," can alone be genuine, and not 
1 ' The only begotten God, ' ' nor ' ' God only begotten, ' ' 
in spite of the English authorities, and afterward the 
German, who adopted the latter phrase. The text that 
follows — "Which is in the bosom of the Father" — 
refers to the truth and actuality of the Sonship, made 
known as genuine by the ' i bosom position ' ' that is 
assigned to Him. But this is only by the way. 
Does not John mean to say that out of the flesh of 
Jesus has unmistakably shone upon Him the Divine 
Being who is distindt therefrom ? For what does he 
understand by the glory of Jesus, which Jesus mani- 
fested at Cana in Galilee, so that His disciples believed 
on Him ? What does Jesus understand by the glory 
of God when He says to Martha : "If thou believedst, 
thou shouldst see the glory of God " ? Is, perchance, 
the wondrous power of Jesus an emanation of His 
otherwise hidden glory ? But Jesus performs no mir- 
acles in the power of that which he is eternally, but 
in the power of a special Divine investiture for His 
Messianic call, which He received because He declined 
to prove His Divinity otherwise than by suffering. 
This glory to which John testifies was the glory of 

158 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



His Messiahship, the humiliation of Him who was 
God, because He came not to judge the world but to 
save it. By this glory John knew Him who was God 
forever. This could only be He whom the Father's 
wondrous love has given to us that all who believe in 
Him should not perish but have life everlasting. To 
believe in Jesus and in this faith, to have the life in His 
name, this was and remained to John always a paradox. 
And that this paradox was and is demanded he per- 
ceived as a paradox of the bodily appearance of Jesus 
with His eternal essence. Yet it is this very paradox 
that revealed to John the Messianic calling of Jesus. 
Eternal God and yet like us, and because like us 
therefore belonging to us, and because belonging to 
us more completely than any other who might desire 
to pass beyond our bound and be like God — eritis 
stent Deus — therefore the Messiah and our Savior ! 
According to John, the humiliation even of the Word 
which became flesh is our salvation. 

And this Jesus — thus it is demanded by some, and 
even a historian like Harnack pursues this demand — 
ought to have communicated to His disciples the secret 
of His " fatherless birth/ ' as it is called, and of His 
everlasting, supermundane going forth. But were the 
disciples able to understand and believe this before they 
had known the whole tenor of His Messianic calling ? 
That He is the Son of God and that they perceived 
Him as Son of God, this, as we have said, was already 
expressed in their acknowledgment of His Messiah- 
ship. That it contained no blasphemy they were per- 
suaded, because they perceived in Him the Messiah, 
as the Jews also unhesitatingly conceded this predicate 

159 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

to the Messiah who actually should prove to be Mes- 
siah. This is also expressed in the adjuring question 
of the high priest: ' ' Art Thou Christ, the Son of the 
living God? " But just in what manner He was the 
Son of God, what this Divine Sonship signified, this 
they could only perceive when the whole blessed real- 
ity of all that His Messiahship comprehended and 
meant for them was laid before them. Till then they 
still waited for the revelation of His Messiahship, altho 
and because they believed in it ; but they knew not 
that all this which they could not yet harmonize with 
His Messiahship was, in fac?t, the proof of His Mes- 
siahship. It was proof that He had come not to judge 
the world, but to redeem it; not to destroy the lives of 
men, but to save them. What He told them on the last 
night — " I came out from the Father and am come into 
the world; again I leave the world, and go unto the 
Father ' ' ; and what He prayed in this last night : " O 
Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the 
glory which I had with Thee before the world was ' ' 
— were most important and mysterious utterances 
whose significance was soon to become intelligible to 
the disciples, but was not yet clear, because they 
could not yet understand His way. 

No, He could not tell, He could not communicate to 
the disciples the mystery of His birth. He thought 
of His Father and of all that which He had given up, 
not as a sacrifice, but as One who would be nothing 
other than we are. On this account He speaks of it 
just as little as of His Messiahship. From His adls 
and His experience they should know Him, and did 
know Him finally so well that they learned to pray to 

160 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



Him and had to pray to Him. From now on they knew 
that He was God from eternity, and understood what, 
properly speaking, many could now communicate only 
to those who were convinced of His Divine Messiah- 
ship. 

What the evangelists Matthew and Luke record 
does not have for its purpose to make clear to us the 
incarnation of Him who was God, but it is not there- 
fore merely a product of legend and poetry which 
could only have originated in the Christian congrega- 
tion. It rather traces the birth of the child of Mary, 
appointed as Messiah, and thus as King of the King- 
dom of God, and as Savior of the world, to the work- 
ing of the Spirit of God, by which all workings of 
God, especially all workings of grace, consummate 
themselves. God's Spirit brings it about that Mary, 
Joseph's betrothed, should bear the child in the line 
of David's house, and thus it becomes heir to David's 
throne. God's Spirit brings it about that this child 
shall be born in order to die, that thereby the reverse 
be prepared for us, even eternal life. God's Spirit 
brings it about that Simeon comes to the temple, sees 
the little child which is brought there by the parents, 
and breaks out into the words of his song of 
praise: " Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in 
peace, O Lord, according to Thy word; for mine eyes 
have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared 
before the face of all peoples; a light for revelation to 
the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel. ' ' And 
the same Spirit of God brings it about that Simeon 
prophesied: " This is set for the falling and rising up 
of many in Israel, and for a sign which is spoken 

161 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

against/ ' We perceive that this child, so wondrously 
born in the power of the Spirit of God, is yet born in 
order to die ; we perceive that in both evangelists this 
child's history is a history misunderstood of men, a 
history of suffering, such as no other man ever experi- 
enced it. But this child and this man had to experi- 
ence it if He is to be one come, not to judge the 
world, which had indeed ripened them for judgment, 
but one who should save it. " Conceived of the Holy 
Ghost/ ' but " born of the Virgin Mary," saluted and 
praised by God's angels, but " suffered under Pontius 
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, descended to 
the dead ' ' — this was His lot. That His birth already, 
altho so wondrously brought about, belongs to the 
history of suffering is easily seen when we consider 
that, according to both evangelists, Joseph, the be- 
trothed of Mary, only learned later what honor awaited 
her and what task was also intended for him. There 
was no man who had believed Mary when she narrated 
what happened to her — Joseph, indeed, the least. She 
had to keep silent and commit to God her way. There- 
fore, she humbled herself, and said to the angel : * ' Be- 
hold the handmaid of the L,ord; be it unto me according 
to Thy word ' ' — the deepest humiliation which till then 
a human being could take upon herself, and which 
could bring to her the fate of being repudiated by 
Joseph and being despised by every one as an unmar- 
ried woman who was about to bring forth. And Joseph 
could just as little speak about it to any one, be- 
cause there was none who would have believed him. 
Thus nothing was left them but to keep the secret and 
say nothing about it till Mary's mouth was opened 
162 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



when Jesus had risen and ascended to heaven. And 
there was kept and transmitted by the congregation 
an account of this annunciation which could only 
depend on Mary's communications, and which was so 
chaste and careful that nothing was added beyond this 
little of the Divine miracle, till the wild fancy of later 
time invented a history of the birth and infancy which 
has not the remotest idea of the humiliation of Him 
who was God. 

This very history of the birth in Matthew and Luke, 
in its strict scantiness and holy chastity, serves as con- 
firmation for the words of Paul and John, who wholly 
express the mystery. It is God's working that the 
child is born, it is God who becomes man, and con- 
descends to us, and in this child, just because and only 
because it is thus humble, and belongs entirely to us, 
we have the Messiah, the Savior ! 

Thus the resurrection of Christ leads us to the knowl- 
edge and the acknowledgment of His eternal Godhead, 
and thus to the knowledge of the miracle without an 
equal — the incarnation of Him who eternally was 
and is and shall be God, and nevertheless who be- 
came forever man for our good. The resurrection, the 
resuscitation, He experienced happened to Him because 
He was man. It is nothing extraordinary, tho it 
does not issue as the consequence of our humanity 
per se> but rather as a sequence of the grace of God 
toward us men. Christ rose because He was man, 
because He was and is like us. But through the resur- 
rection it became possible to Him, the man Jesus, to 
demonstrate and to prove that He is also the Christ, 
the Messiah. Whoever experiences and know 7 s this 

163 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

knows also that He must needs rise, that this was the 
justification which He must needs experience, even 
tho no one had attested it to us. But it was impossi- 
ble that we should fail of a sufficient attestation of 
this, for it must be experienced that He is a Savior, 
and this experience with Him as the Savior by the 
realization of His presence is, in faCt, the experience 
that He actually has risen, has actually returned from 
death and the realm of the dead to His own, has re- 
turned forever, in order to be experienced forever as 
the Messiah. But to be the Messiah, and allow as 
one beyond space and time to be experienced as a 
present Messiah by lost sinners was not human — it was 
Divine. The Messiah, the anointed of God, the chosen 
and appointed King of His Kingdom, is God and 
L,ord. He did not become God, for this no one can do, 
but He is God yet became man in order to be wholly 
and forever with us, and to be everything that He is 
for our benefit. This is the miracle of all miracles — 
incomprehensible, inconceivable, but real and true. 
The resurrection is a miracle — it is the decisive miracle ; 
on it depends all that concerns Jesus. The incarna- 
tion, however, is the greater miracle and the greatest 
of all miracles to which the resurrection leads us. 

The acknowledgment, however, of the miracle of 
the resurrection, and thereby of the greater miracle of 
the incarnation, is the acknowledgment of the faCt 
of our pardon, of our redemption. Our pardon, our 
redemption, is no less wondrous than the fadt of the 
incarnation of Him who is God. One is as certainly 
a paradox as the other, the reverse of all that is self- 
evident and consistent, the one no less than the other. 

164 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



Can I believe the one, my pardon, I can also believe 
the other, His incarnation; yes, I must believe it, for 
these two are inseparably united. Pardon with the 
incarnation of God is a true pardon, by which I, the 
sinner, have the living God. Without the incarnation 
it may only be a pardon given in gentle pity for my 
errors, the mistakes of my wrong development. But 
the greater these appear to me the more impossible it 
is to regard them as pardonable through such a slight- 
ing of them. For the hour comes certainly in which I 
must confess what the Psalmist has already confessed 
thousands of years before : ' ' For mine iniquities are 
gone over mine head, as an heavy burden they are too 
heavy for me. For day and night Thy hand was heavy 
upon me: my moisture was changed as with the drought 
of summer." Well for me, then, if I still have time 
and strength to betake myself for refuge to the whole, 
wondrous, unsearchably great mercy of our God ! 

The resurrection of the man Jesus, the Messiah of 
God, and the incarnation belong together, as also the 
incarnation of God and our resurrection, or our redemp- 
tion till its completion in the resurrection. It is not, 
however, as if now, after the fadts stand before our 
eyes, a priori, the one can be seen as a result of the 
other, or as if the one could be developed from the 
other by some rational necessity. On the contrary, 
we perceive how everything fits in and harmon- 
izes with every other thing, how everything locks 
together, and how everything is a free Divine deed. 
Free aCtion is the cause of our redemption, of Christ's 
resuscitation, of His Messiahship, His incarnation. 
Everything is by free adtion. Everything is rational, 

165 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

but nothing is necessary for reason, rather everything 
is superrational. Only thus do we understand the 
way of the Messiah, the way of Jesus to the cross, 
which He went indeed voluntarily, and yet was, as it 
were, compelled to die. He gave Himself unto death 
and was " obedient even unto death." He gave His 
life as a ransom for many, and yet He was delivered 
up into the hands of men who treated Him as they 
pleased. "For as the Father hath life in Himself, 
even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Him- 
self ' ' ; and yet ' ' As Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." 
He had to die that we should have life. " No one," 
said He, " taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down 
of myself ' ' ; and again : ' ' This is your hour and the 
power of darkness." 

Thus this Jesus, this Messiah, actually belongs in 
the Gospel in spite of Harnack's contradiction. He is 
the Gospel of God for the lost world. He proclaims 
the Kingdom of God, His disciples proclaim Him the 
King of the Kingdom, because from the King it fol- 
lows that the Kingdom exists. Christ is the King; 
as such He can be known and experienced, and is 
known and experienced, tho He does not look as if 
He were a King. In like manner is the Kingdom of 
God experienced in righteousness, peace, and joy in 
the Holy Spirit, altho it does not look as if it existed 
in reality as a fulfilment of all Divine promises, as the 
tenor of all happiness only known and felt by those 
who were unhappy and lost. The Gospel which Jesus 
proclaimed was the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, 
and therefore the Gospel about Himself. Therefore 

166 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST 



He could say: "If I, by the finger of God, or in 
power of the Holy Spirit, cast out devils, then is the 
Kingdom of God come upon you without your knowl- 
edge." Therefore He speaks strangely on the one 
hand, like John the Baptist : " Repent, for the King- 
dom of God is at hand," and then again no more 
like the Baptist, because John spoke of the mightier 
who w r as to come after him, whereas Jesus spoke not of 
another One, but of Himself. Once only did He speak 
of another One : "I am come in My Father's name, 
and ye receive Me not ; if another shall come in His 
own name, Him ye will receive." He puts Himself 
and His authority from the beginning of the Sermon 
on the Mount to its close over against all authorities 
to w r hich the people otherwise listen. He says : 
"Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest." He is not known and 
acknowledged as the Messiah, the Son of God, because, 
according to His appearance, He is nothing but a son 
of man — a man among men. As a man among men 
He is the Messiah, the Son of God, from eternity to 
eternity. This myster}^, that the son of man (as He is 
called by those who would establish their disbelief) is 
also the Son of God, and that, vice versa, the Son of 
God is the son of man — just this is the blessed mystery 
of His Messiahship, the n^stery of the incarnation 
of God. Without Him, without His person, without 
His attitude toward us in time and eternity everything 
becomes nothing. Only with Him are we something 
and can do something. Only in and with the Word 
made known by His presence do we have Him. 

In order to obtain that which Harnack calls the 

167 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Gospel, one must, in fa6l, reduce the entire Gospel to the 
two commandments of love of God and love of neigh- 
bor, which, however, are already Old Testament com- 
mandments, and appear in the Old Testament, more- 
over, as comprehension of the whole law. One must not, 
as is affirmed, deepen but rather empty of its complete 
fulness of love God's Father's name, which is al- 
ready known in the Old Testament. One must finally 
reduce to lower terms, from its infinite value and emi- 
nence over all the glory of the world, our knowledge 
of the infinite worth of the soul of man, tho yet a 
lost soul — also an Old Testament idea. Reduction! 
Reduction of the grace of God, reduction of our sin, 
reduction of our lost estate, reduction of the redeeming 
love of God, reduction of God's freedom — nothing but 
reduction is the real Gospel to suffer. To this end we 
are to eliminate everything which does not fit in order 
to get a Christ who neither is more than we are, nor 
can do more than every other man, who is only gifted 
for His calling ! But separation requires only art, not 
science. Jesus not only belongs in the Gospel, He is 
the Gospel. Gospel is the correlate, the corresponding 
word for that what the Old Testament promise has in 
view. It is the message of the fulfilled promise, and 
there is no Gospel which gives up the fulfilment of the 
promise. Jesus is the fulfiller; therefore He says: " I 
came not to destroy, but to fulfil." As the fac?t of the 
promise is a free gift of God's grace and not a se- 
quence of history (the promise is not, in the phrase of 
Sophocles, "a child of hope," but, vice versa, in Israel 
the hope is a child of the promise), then its fulfilment 
is still more appropriately a free gift of God's grace. 

168 



THE PERSON OF JESUS 



But this gift is Jesus, the Son, whom the Father sent 
not that He should judge the world but that He should 
save the world. It follows from this that " He that 
believeth on the Son hath eternal life, but he that 
obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath 
of God abideth on him. ' ' That such is the case every 
one must confess, even tho he would not have it so. 



169 



IX 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS AND RECEPTION IN 
ISRAEL 



HE Son of God in the world, the Messiah sent 
to us by the grace of God, lauded by angels 
and declared to men, but a human being 
like other human beings, who did not look 
as if he were the Son of God — such was the Messiah at 
His advent. How and whereby should He be known ? 
Since He rose from the dead and came into our experi- 
ence as the Messiah, through the realization of His 
self-humiliating love which is stronger than death and 
hell, all mysteries are now solved and banished, but 
they are removed only in such a manner that we know 
the mystery of His appearance no more as a mys- 
tery, but as the necessary proof of His Messiahship. 

He is born like us, the son of a woman; lying there 
bedded, indeed, as other men are not bedded; not more 
glorious and magnificent, but poorer, in a manger, in a 
trough appointed for the cattle and ordinarily used by 
cattle. With pains and tears Mary waited for her 
hour. Now she rejoices that a man is born into the 
world, but she can tell nobody what has happened to 
her. She must keep quiet and Joseph must keep 
quiet, for no one could and would believe them ; they 
would spoil everything from the very start. A vision 
of angels announces to the shepherds what had taken 
place : Christ the Lord, the Messiah, is born in the 
170 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

city of David, in Bethlehem, but poor, lying in swad- 
dling-clothes in a manger. There is no word to tell 
us who the child is, save that He is the son and heir 
of David's throne, the long-expedled Messiah. They 
believe this, for to the poor and humble the greatest 
prospedl which is opened is not incredible, which 
often seems incredible to one who knows the har- 
monious order of the world. Far less was it incred- 
ible to the Israelites, who had yearned so long already 
for the Messiah that was to avert the judgment of 
God and heal the miseries of the people. They come 
and worship and declare what they have seen, 
but Mary and Joseph are silent, and Mary kept all 
these things, pondering them in her heart. The in- 
habitants of Bethlehem hear from the shepherds what 
they have seen, but no one goes to them and believes 
that the child of these foot travelers, lying poor in 
its manger, is the Messiah. But Joseph relied on faith 
in Him whom he did not see, and called the child, as 
the angel had bidden him, "Jesus" — i.e., Redeemer, 
Helper, Savior, Deliverer. Herod hears of Him through 
the Gentiles who have received a sign, and have now 
come to inquire where the born King of the Jews is. 
With the fear arising from a bad conscience he learns the 
certainty of the truth of this news, and seeks to kill 
the child. God prote<5ls it, but only in such wise that 
it is hidden from men. The fame of Him is silenced 
by reason of the great sorrow which Herod's infanticide 
has brought upon Bethlehem. When Joseph and Mary 
return from Egypt, and, moreover, not to Bethlehem 
but to Nazareth, no one knows anything of the 
child. Jesus is educated in the quiet and obscurity of 

171 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

the artisan's house, which He leaves only once, when 
twelve years of age, to go with the parents to Jeru- 
salem. There He finds and feels Himself at home in 
the temple, in the house of the Father, of His Father. 
He associates with the priests and scribes, questions 
them and is questioned of them, as teacher and pupil 
usually ask and answer each other, and every one 
wonders at His most promising gifts. But Mary and 
Joseph feel only pain at His stay ; they seek Him for 
three days, and find Him finally in the temple. When 
Mary upbraids Him, He does not understand her, 
but she also does not understand Him, and apprehends 
not that it was unnecessary for her to seek the child 
committed to her, because at Jerusalem He could have 
been in no other place than in the house of Him whom 
He inwardly called Father in a more perfect sense 
than that in which any other could address God. 
Jesus understands her not, but He goes with His parents 
to Nazareth and is subject unto them, as the law of 
the Father demanded it. Thus He reaches thirty 
years of age, Himself a carpenter, like Joseph had 
been. Thirty years of obscurity of the Son of God 
in the world ! What a humiliation was this for the 
mother, whose husband had died long ago, and who 
now, w T ith the other children, turned to Him, the first- 
born, for guidance ! What a humiliating path was 
this for Jesus to tread ! But Mary walked it and 
He walked it, and tho Mary had to conquer herself, 
He had not to conquer Himself, but at the most only 
such temptations as come to Him from the world, as 
later on, when His brethren tempted Him (John 
vii:3). 
172 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 



Then came John (a Jndean, related to Jesus but un- 
acquainted with Him, who had grown up in heathenish 
Galilee), the precursor and preparer of the way of the 
Messiah. He had received the Divine message of the 
time which was now to begin and of the Messiah who 
was to come. John received the instruction for His 
appearance through the Word of God, which came to 
him as once to the prophets. Not so was it with 
Jesus. Jesus must needs go the ways only which the 
whole people, which every other had to go, when a 
prophet of God appeared and announced what was to 
happen. For ' ' The I,ord God will do nothing, but He 
revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets," 
and the people must needs hear what Jehovah had 
revealed. John preached and baptized with the bap- 
tism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as we 
have already stated. Jesus went to him, now more 
deeply moved by the hour which was now come than 
any of His brothers of the children of Israel, for whom 
and with whom He felt, believed, hoped, and longed. 
He had indeed nothing to confess, like the others, that 
burdened Him as guilt, and therefore, as it seemed, 
nothing to seek of the Baptist. But that which bur- 
dened Him was the guilt which He had to share with 
His brothers, was the judgment under which they 
groaned, were the sins which they had committed. 
The blessing and guilt of the whole people were His 
blessing and His guilt, the people's faith and hope 
His faith and His hope; for He thought not of Him- 
self but of His brothers, to whom He belonged, into 
whose communion He was born, and for whom He 
had now to carry their sins. John, the prophet of the 

173 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Messiah, knows Him for whom he was sent and 
whom he had hitherto not known. He knows not His 
name; but he knows His office, and knows, therefore, 
Him, the bearer of this office. Through Divine illu- 
mination it becomes clear to John that this is the man 
for whom with Israel and for Israel he has w r aited. On 
this account he refuses to baptize Him with the bap- 
tism which could only symbolize and warrant the 
forgiveness of sins, the forgiveness which this very 
Messiah was to bring in the power of God, in the power 
of the Spirit ; and therefore in truth he said : ' • I 
have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to 
me?" We understand this refusal. But do we also 
understand the answer of Jesus : ' ' For thus it becom- 
eth us to fulfil all righteousness ' ' ? How for Him and 
for the Baptist could this belong to righteousness, to 
that which has God's verdicft in its favor, that Jesus 
should suffer Himself to be baptized, and that John 
should baptize Him? And yet that Jesus suffered 
Himself to be baptized is a fadl that issues as a conse- 
quence of the same human necessity whereby He had 
become a member of Israel, and therefore for the Bap- 
tist it appears as a consequence of his calling that he 
should baptize this just One for whom he existed. 
The desire of Jesus was to do the duty and the deeds 
of One who had humbled Himself to live and to suffer 
with His brethren, to humble Himself before the living 
God, and to hope in His goodness. Upon Him rested 
the burden of the sin and guilt of His people, the 
chosen people, and still more, that of the other human 
race. He thought not of Himself, but of us. He suf- 
fered under this pressure of the world's guilt, but He 
174 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

could only shake it off by renouncing us inwardly. 
Our guilt was His guilt. He carried this complicity 
with us in His flesh and blood, because He w r as and is 
of our flesh and blood. He desired nothing more ar- 
dently than forgiveness — forgiveness for us all. There- 
fore, He humbled Himself and confessed, not His own 
guilt, and yet that which was His guilt by His com- 
plicity in our humanity. He suffered Himself to be 
baptized like one who has nothing, nothing at all, in 
which to be preferred above us, save that He suffered 
where the least of us feels the pressure of guilt which 
rests on us. He humbles Himself, John baptizes Him, 
and thereby symbolizes and warrants to Him that for 
which John waits, in hope that Jesus should not only 
live to see the redemption as the first-born from the 
dead, but that He should bring it about by death and 
resurrection. The water of Jordan which he pours 
over His head is a symbol of the blood w^hich Jesus 
shall shed, and so that other, the baptism w r ith which 
He must be baptized and the cup which Jesu^ must 
drink are af tenvard also mentioned together by Jesus, 
and the apostle John speaks of water and blood, which 
together attest to us the reality and truth of Jesus' 
Messiahship. But when John baptizes Him, the 
Father seals what John symbolizes. He answers the 
obedience of His Son, and with the symbol the Word 
of the Father and the reality of His Spirit unite. 
God, by this sign, is now to remain forever with Him, 
not merely as hitherto He has visited His servants, 
enduing them for their special task and for a short 
time. Jesus, who was and is eternally like God, but 
man and our brother, and on this account like us, 

175 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

has until now lacked the grace of God and the help 
of God and of His Spirit ; but now He is prepared for 
the way which lies before Him. 

In the power of the Spirit, in the power of the con- 
sciousness that the Father is with Him in all things 
which He will do, He can now accomplish every- 
thing which belongs to His calling, and can re- 
ceive everything that He asks or needs. He is led 
only by the spirit of His vocation, only by the 
Father. He sees and hears whatever He is to do 
and say, because He attends to nothing else but to 
fulfil His calling for His brethren. He needs no reve- 
lations, for He knows at every hour what to do 
and speak when He looks at His brethren and at the 
Father, when He sees their disbelief and when He sees 
their belief, for He knows their hearts and needs not 
to be told anything. He receives revelations only 
where He needs the grace of God, God's comfort and 
strengthening, as at those functions where He had not 
to deal with us, His brethren, e.g., the mount of the 
transfiguration and in the garden of Gethsemane. 
Having been baptized, what has He now to do? He 
who in all His surroundings had sufficiently perceived 
that sin corrupts all men and everything was prepared 
for His task. The way to the Baptist had been serious 
enough, and the word by which He forced the Baptist 
to baptize Him affords to us a profound insight into 
the depths of the workings of His will toward the re- 
solve to live and to die wholly for the will of the Father 
and for the salvation of the brethren. He knew His 
life-problem. That He was called to stand on the side 
of God and to live for God's purposes among sinners 

176 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISR AEL 

could not have remained hidden from Him in the 
thirty years' silence at Nazareth. Now, as it seemed, 
the moment had come to present Himself to the world 
as a helper and Savior. The moment seemed favor- 
able. Thus far nothing more had taken place than the 
declaration of the Baptist. This, however, had pre- 
pared the people to receive the Messiah exultantly if 
-He only came. Forgiveness of sins, and in its power 
freedom from all distress ; deliverance from their ene- 
mies, the Romans ; liberty from all misery — who is 
there that has not desired all this ? That Jesus did not 
share the so-called Messianic ideal, or the Messianic 
ideas of the people, was a matter of course for Him 
who suffered more under the pressure of sin than 
those who committed it. But there were others, par- 
ticularly among those who had come to John, who also 
did not share this view. According to them, the Mes- 
sianic help was to consist in the abolition of all op- 
pression. They wanted forgiveness only because they 
were in oppression. Neither was Jesus nor were they 
of the opinion that their oppressed condition is to be 
blamed for all sins. On the contrary, Jesus was no 
social democrat, nor were these Israelites such. Yet 
it made a difference whether the grace of God is sought 
for the forgiveness it brings or for deliverance. Jesus 
is here in behalf of people who feel and think as He 
feels and thinks. Was not now the time to appear be- 
fore them and to manifest Himself to the people, in 
order to cure them at the same time from the error of 
their thoughts and from their false Messianic ideas ? 

But the spirit of His calling directed Him not to 
men, but into the desert far away from men. It was 

177 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

not an unconscious, obscure impulse which He followed; 
but with a clear consciousness, filled with the conviction 
of the task He was to do, He saw that first and nearest 
to Him a hard struggle impended. It was not a strug- 
gle with His own wish and will, with His own heart ; 
He was and remained at one with the Father's will, 
and never resigned Himself to illusions concerning 
His task and duty. Still less had He to struggle in- 
wardly with the thoughts and notions of men ; about 
this He was clear, even when He bowed under the 
hand of the Baptist. It was the struggle with Satan 
which was before Him, and which had to be fought 
out first before He could teach the people. It was a 
struggle with the enemy of God and men, whose 
world-dominion had to be broken. Fasting and pray- 
ing He spends His time, for it is only in the unbroken 
communion with the Father, maintained with all earnest- 
ness, that Satan can be overcome. At last the strug- 
gle begins. He was hungry ; now Satan has found an 
opportunity to approach Him temptingly : "If Thou 
art the Son of God, in the grace of God as the chosen 
Messiah, at whose command everything is, then com- 
mand that these stones become bread ! y ' Of the stones 
God was to raise up children unto Abraham — why 
should the Son of God not be able to supply Himself 
with bread out of the stones ? And whom should He 
wrong thereby? Not those who afterward mocked 
Him on the cross : ' ' He saved others, Himself He can 
not save." But not thus can He fulfil His calling. 
With a few loaves He could miraculously feed thou- 
sands, as He afterward repeatedly showed. Here, how- 
ever, He would have used His wondrous power, not for 

178 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

others, but for His own benefit. He, who desired 
nothing other than to be obedient to the Father's will, 
to bind men again to the Father ; He, who wished 
only to exist for men, to live for them, to work for 
them, in order to fulfil the Father's will, would have 
receded in the very beginning from God's way, would 
have cared for Himself, would have declined the sacri- 
fices and sufferings which His way and calling required 
of Him. He dared not. His way was pointed out to 
Him with and by His calling. He must entirely rely 
on the Father. He answered Satan : ' ' It is written : 
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." 

As Son of the Father, having thus refused this de- 
mand, He is now in spirit taken along by Satan and 
set on the pinnacle of the temple on His Father's 
house, where He is shown the people — the multitudes 
waiting in the forecourts for the blessing and long- 
ing for salvation, or those who have come to visit the 
temple. Satan reminds Jesus, who had confuted Him 
with the Word of God, of the Scripture which says : 
1 i He shall give His angels charge concerning thee, and 
in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest haply thou 
dash thy foot against a stone. ' ' This might, indeed, ap- 
pear to be so to him who only asked after God's Word 
and will. There in Psalm xci we read, indeed : " To 
keep thee in all thy ways. ' ' Was this not the w 7 ay which 
He had to go, was obliged to go, away to the people 
who, as He knew, now waited here for the deed of God 
which was to bring deliverance? Jesus had, indeed, 
the power to summon God's angels to His service ; 
He Himself said it afterward when, in the night of 

179 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

His sufferings, Peter meant to defend Him with the 
sword : ' ' Thinkest thou that I can not beseech my 
Father, and He shall even now send Me more than 
twelve legions of angels ? ' ' But neither now nor 
then is the time which shall afterward come when He 
shall appear in His glory, and all the angels with Him. 
It is not the Father who shows Him this way. The 
Father was silent, and Jesus knew that He had not 
come to use force, were it even to be manifested as the 
power of the sight of His Divine Majesty. He knew 
that His way was a different one, that He had to 
suffer and endure whatever the renunciation of His 
heavenly glory demanded. He refused the temptation 
with the Word : " Again it is written, thou shalt not 
tempt the Lord thy God. ' ' Beyond that Word, let the 
way be ever so difficult, He can not go. 

Now, Satan shows Him from an exceedingly high 
mountain all the kingdoms of the world and the glory 
of them. This world Jesus seeks to win — for it and 
in it He will live, He will work, He will show His 
power ; it is to be His that it may have peace. 
Jesus is to have it, provided He falls down and 
worships him (Satan). Every man has his price ; 
the higher he stands, the greater is the price for 
which he can be had. Jesus — thus thinks Satan — is 
to be had for the price of the whole world, since here 
is a simple, safe way to obtain it. One needs only to 
renounce God and give the honor to him who has the 
dominion in the world. One needs only to leave be- 
hind him God, the fear of God, and faith in God. On 
the other hand, one must resolutely resign himself to 
persecution to the utmost, even unto death. To be 

180 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

sure, Jesus was already decided. Rather renounce 
everything and blindly trust in the Father and go God's 
ways — this was the answer which He had thus far 
given. For Satan nothing more was left than to step 
forth openly, to demand and offer, even tho in the real- 
ization of his defeat. But for Jesus nothing else was 
left for Him but to put up also with this most revolting 
of all demands, this buffet in the face, for the sake of 
men who a thousand times follow such demands, 
whom He meant not to destroy but to save. They 
would not understand Him. But what would happen 
if, in His wrath, He should trample Satan under His 
feet? His wrath would reach farther, and devour 
every one who, for the sake of gaining the world, has 
abandoned the living God. He dare not act, He dare 
not rebel, He dare not rely upon His Divine endow- 
ment of power. He can only rely upon His present 
task, and this is prescribed to Him : " Thou shalt wor- 
ship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
serve.' ' Faith and obedience: these are the only 
weapons which are at the command of Him who be- 
came man — a sign again that the incarnation is the 
humiliation of Him to whom as God and Lord every- 
thing belongs, and who as God and Lord can do every- 
thing. It will and must come to this, that the king- 
doms of the world are become the Kingdom of our 
Lord and of His Christ. They already are His, and 
He would destroy them if He had only come to act 
consistently with the world. But for this He had not 
come. He came to save the sinful and, therefore, lost 
world — His world. The way to this goal can only be 
a way of suffering. Jesus will and must suffer all, as 

181 



THK ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

He Himself also says at the end of His way : ' ' This 
is your hour, and the power of darkness.' ' 

The victory is obtained. Jesus has not had to battle 
with images of His own heart, or even merely of His 
imagination — as if mind-pidlures did not come out of 
the heart ! Still less has He had to fight with the 
imagination of that which the world offered to Him 
and pressed upon Him ; for He was in the wilderness, 
and what He was to do in the world He had agreed upon 
long ago with the Father. The Father had accepted 
His vow and had given Him a promise, which went 
far beyond all the power of the world. Jesus had to 
fight with the power which stands invisibly but really 
behind the world, and keeps fast hold upon it, and drives 
it from sin to sin. Jesus has conquered, and now re- 
turns from the wilderness to the world, of which He 
now knows quite certainly what reception it will pre- 
pare for Him — not with the joy of vidlory, but with 
the seriousness of death. 

He can not come with a great show of power, He 
can not lay claim with force and might to His right 
to sit upon the throne of David and to rule over 
Israel, and thence over the kingdom of the world, be- 
cause with force and might sin can not be overcome, 
it can only be condemned. The time should come, 
indeed, as symbolically it had often already occurred 
in Israel's history, that judgment will begin at the 
house of God. But this will only be when it has been 
determined whether the world will be helped by Jesus. 
But for the time being it remains, as Jesus often de- 
clared, that the Father has sent the Son, not to judge 
the world, but to save it ; that He did not come to 

182 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

destroy the souls of men, but to redeem them. On 
this account He must endure all things. There is no 
more difficult work than to redeem sinners from their 
sins and guilt. The spiritual preparation which He 
received at His baptism in Jordan has given Him 
everything which He needs for His calling — strength 
to work and strength to suffer — and in this strength 
He goes His way, the way which He needs must go. 
He has the Father, to whom He belongs forever, even 
now belongs, altho He has renounced His equality 
with God; this is all He has, yet, having it, He has 
enough. 

He returns to the place where John baptized, and 
finds at first no one. But on the following day He 
finds two disciples, and by and by four others. He 
finds them by showing Himself to them as the One 
who knows their sin and the burden resting on them, 
and, in His joy over these few, He promises them that 
they shall see greater things issuing from the com- 
munion between the Father and Himself that shall 
give them confidence as to the fulfilling of all the 
promises of God. They can, therefore, be composed 
when He does not meet every injustice with force and 
destroy it. But, on the other hand, great as was the 
confidence which He had Himself and with which He 
tried to imbue His disciples, He never resigned Himself 
to illusions. From the beginning His task lies clearly 
before Him. He will not first revert all the misery and 
remove all the outward oppression and violence from 
His people, as if thereby sin also would cease. The 
word in the song of Zacharias is not thus to be under- 
stood: " That we being delivered out of the hand of 

183 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

our enemies, should serve Him without fear all our 
days." The closing words of this song show that 
forgiveness of sins is the main condition of every 
amelioration of the outward condition, and that in 
this consists the knowledge of salvation. Jesus knows 
that He has to deal with sin, and not only indeed with 
the sin which oppresses, but first with the sin of the 
oppressed themselves. It is this idea to which He 
unreservedly gives expression in the Sermon on the 
Mount, and in the light of this idea we see why He 
closes with the woe upon those who only say to Him : 
11 Lord, Lord,'' ' but do not the will of His Father. In 
this struggle certainly He dreams not of speedy vic- 
tories. This He can not do, because as no other He 
knows the power of sin. Because He never experi- 
enced it in Himself, He has seen the more plainly how 
it destroys everything. This one must keep in view if 
he wishes to understand Christ's way. Savior of sin- 
ners He is to be and must be — it is this certainty that 
showed Him His way, and prepared for Him His 
destiny, and therefore He was clear from the beginning 
about that which awaited Him. 

As we have already stated, He proclaimed the Gos- 
pel of the Kingdom of God and spoke of the Father, 
to whom the people so often and so ardently prayed 
for deliverance. How could He depend upon inspir- 
ing faith in His words about this Kingdom having 
come near, and about the mercy of the Father who 
has risen to deliver His people ? For where was the 
Kingdom of God's dominion when the rule of the 
mighty, of the men in seats of power, of the oppressors, 
had not been broken, when everything remained as it 

184 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

was ? By what means could the truth of His predic- 
tion be known ? That He was right in every word 
which He spoke against sin and against sinners — 
not only against the sin of the oppressors, but also 
against the sin of the oppressed — this every one might 
concede if he would. That He rigidly rejected sin ; 
that He struck at and condemned it in its innermost, 
finest form, was, first of all, the warrant for His ap- 
pearance as a successor of the Baptist. But that with 
this rigid judgment He announced, nevertheless, the 
fulfilment of all promises of God, and set forth the in- 
scrutable mercy of God — this legitimated the Word 
through a wondrous union of judgment and mercy 
which first of all appeared like a promise. So had it 
always been in Israel. The promise had always been 
legitimated by the judgment. Whoever believed the 
promise only did so by subjecting himself at the same 
time to the judgment which was exercised by the same 
God in whom the people put its hope. To this was now 
added a third fa<ft: that Jesus spoke no more of another 
one, of a mightier, who was to come after Him, but of 
Himself, whose office it was to bring everything, to 
give everything, and to realize the whole plan of God. 
His mission no more concerned the promise and the 
future. It concerned the present, and the future only 
so far as He, the presence which He brought, had in 
Himself the promise of the future. And that this was 
truth could be perceived from the very seriousness 
with which He spoke of judgment, and forced every 
one who believed Him to execute judgment on 
himself ere the great hour of judgment came over 
the whole world. That His miraculous adlivity was 

185 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

to support this belief, but that it remained fruitless, 
we shall see afterward. 

It was nothing new what Jesus demanded when 
with His words and His silences He urged the hearers 
to use all seriousness in betaking themselves to their 
self-judgment. It was also nothing new which He 
demanded when He deepened the requirements of the 
law, as some one has said. This deepening was not 
new, indeed, but only inconvenient to the exadl per- 
formers of religion. Nor was the Father's name of 
God new, tho it has never been so strongly, so ener- 
getically used as now. That which was new was the 
fulfilment of the promise, the presence of God, who 
now exercises His dominion, the presence of Jesus, 
the words about Himself — the word: "It is I." 
This was, indeed, the greatest word which could be 
said, which no one but Jesus ever could dare to say — 
a word which He to-day yet repeats and confirms 
when He speaks to us. Therefore said Peter, at the 
close of the address in which Jesus had presented and 
offered Himself as the bread of life : ' ' I,ord, to whom 
shall we go? Thou hast the word of eternal life." 
Everything which men can otherwise devise and con- 
trive is, like all the works of their strength and art, 
only for the dust and for death. What Jesus speaks 
is for eternity, for He is present and stands forever by 
His word. The grace of God, which lasts from eter- 
nity to eternity, has in Him entered into time, has 
acquired the potency of the present, and remains for- 
ever as present. He speaks of Himself and offers 
Himself to men : He is the Gospel. 

True, His words made a deep impression not only on 

186 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

a few, but on the masses. Thousands followed Him, 
and for whole days stayed with Him that they might 
not lose a word of that which He said. This hap- 
pened not only once or twice, but again and again. 
" And there were gathered unto Him great multitudes, 
for he taught them as one having authority and not as 
their scribes. ' ' " And there followed him great multi- 
tudes.' ' " On that day went Jesus out of the house, 
and sat by the seaside. And there were gathered unto 
Him great multitudes, so that he entered into a boat, 
and sat ; and all the multitude stood on the beach.' \ 
11 For the people all hung upon him, listening." 
1 1 Never man so spake, ' ' said the officers of the chief 
priests who were sent out to take him. But the effect 
was little : a few over five hundred, including His 
disciples, and besides some women, which ministered 
unto Him of their substance ; these were all of His fol- 
lowers ! And yet He had come for the whole people 
and wished to satisfy the longing of the whole people. 
How came this about ? It was a consequence of the 
deep seriousness of the self -judgment which He asserted 
and demanded in the power of God. At all times the 
holy seriousness of the Divine demands and the dread 
of the Divine judgment find a willing ear. Men also 
rejoice in the loveliness and graciousness of the Gospel, 
but it does not move the hearts so deeply as the serious- 
ness of the demands. But when it means to take things 
seriously and to believe, when men are about to be put 
into the possession of grace, then they withdraw. For 
melancholy and sad as it may sound, it is nevertheless 
true : Men love darkness, the soreness of their hurt, 
the lost estate in which they are, more than light 

187 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

and healing and restoration — they love death more 
than life. This would be inconceivable if it were not 
still the same to-day. On this account the people do 
not make their decision for Him. Jesus has to take 
from them the benefit of His free speech about the 
Kingdom of God, the goal of all their hope. He speaks 
clearly only to the disciples of the manner in which 
the Kingdom of God exists in secrecy, and is sought by 
some and found by others. It is truly the Kingdom 
of God which shall some day fill the world when judg- 
ment has been held ; and from this Kingdom all offend- 
ers and all evil-doers must be cast out. We can under- 
stand how to the disciples this prophecy could become 
clear because of that which they had in Jesus and 
which no one else believed, while at the same time 
these speeches made the darkness still darker for others. 
It is true, then, that there is a judgment which even 
the most faithful love can not avert ! 

To the end the people remained in their indecision. 
Jesus had enemies. He was hated as fiercely as those 
who as God's servants were His types in the Old Testa- 
ment. He was hated as never a man was hated before 
or since, and this by the leaders of the people, the 
authorities of Israel, the representatives of the law — 
the Pharisees, scribes, and priests. They were called 
to be the first witnesses of the Messiah, but this they 
were not. Jesus, indeed, did not seek them, altho He 
especially gave the priests the honor due them when, 
in directing to them the lepers whom He had healed, 
He instructed these to show themselves to the priests 
"for a testimony unto them." Jesus did not need 
the witness of the priests, for if He was really the Mes- 

188 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

siah He would be known as such by every one who 
wished to know. But He had come in a guise entirely 
different from what the priests expected, not at all like 
one who comes from heaven and whom one knows, as 
the astronomers perceive a phenomenon in the sky and 
know how to estimate it. If His claim was unauthorized, 
then He was a misfortune to Israel through the power 
He had of misleading them. If His claim was author- 
ized, His judgment established, His demands justified, 
if He was the gift of God for His people, that was 
the end of them and their authority which they had 
acquired — an end of the position of the nobility of the 
nation and the privileges which they enjoyed, the 
rights of the priesthood, the domination of the high 
priests. But this they could not bear. They had de- 
cided long ago to kill Him. He should not be the 
Messiah, He could not be ; of this they were per- 
suaded. But the opportunity had not yet been found, 
for even unto the week of passion they were afraid of 
the people. At last, at last, the opportunity came. 

As already stated, Jesus had never given Himself up 
to illusions. He never needed to exchange His so- 
called Messianic ideal for another more correspond- 
ent to the lower reality. He had a truer reality. He 
were not at all the helper given by God Himself to the 
world had He given Himself to illusions, had He not 
completely understood sin, had He not fully estimated 
the cost from the beginning, had He confided too much 
in Himself. From the beginning He had reckoned with 
the thought of death ; at the cleansing of the temple, 
which John narrates, as well as in the Sermon on the 
Mount and the sending of the twelve, as Matthew 

189 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

narrates. True, He spoke openly and unreservedly 
only to the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, and, from 
that time onward, of the necessity that He must die, 
yet even then they did not understand how it could 
come to this ; much less had they understood the 
earlier intimations. John the evangelist specifically 
tells us that the saying, " Destroy this temple, and in 
three days I will raise it up," which had reference to 
the temple of His body, and thus to death and resur- 
rection, was understood neither by the disciples nor by 
the " Jews." How could they then understand what 
Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, of being re- 
viled and persecuted for the sake of His name, or in 
the address in Matthew, when sending out His disci- 
ples, of being hated for the sake of His name ? How 
could they understand what He said of the cross, 
under which one should follow Him? That this 
word is not a later interpolation is a matter of course 
to the reader who knows how the Jews, in Biblical 
language, used to speak of the cross, which since the 
Roman rule began had stared at them on all roads. 
They said, e.g. , of Isaac, when he carried the wood for 
the sacrifice on the mount : ' ' Isaac was loaded with 
the wood, like one who carried his own cross on his 
shoulder." Thus it is not at all necessary to suppose 
that Jesus intended by His words to signify beforehand 
the manner of His death, but He expresses thus the 
fa6l that the world, Jews and Gentiles, will cast Him 
out and deliver Him to death. Why should this not 
have been evident to Him ? We can understand that 
the disciples did not comprehend it, did not, indeed, 
comprehend it at all before it had come about, did not 

190 



APPEARANCE OF JESUS IN ISRAEL 

even then comprehend it, but abandoned their faith. 
But what interest have we to deny a f acft which was 
surprising even to its narrators, the evangelists, and 
still just on that account was narrated by them ? 

No, even the disciples were not fully and forever 
won for the Lord. Even they did not wholly under- 
stand Him till He was dead and risen. True, Jesus 
thus praised the Father : ' ' I thank Thee, O Father, 
Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these 
things from the wise and understanding, and didst 
reveal them unto babes," and in accordance with this 
He revealed unto them the Father and the Father re- 
vealed unto them the Son. But even in this company 
of the disciples, only a day before the death of Jesus, 
the petition is nevertheless uttered: " Lord, show us 
the Father, and it suffice th us ! ' ' To which Jesus 
answers: " Have I been so long time with you, and 
dost thou not know Me ? He that hath seen Me hath 
seen the Father. ' ' And thus might they lay hold of 
Him, and grasp and keep Him; and thus could they 
know everything and have everything — yes, wholly 
in Him and from Him. What, then, was still neces- 
sary in order to know Jesus wholly, to have Him for- 
ever, and to become through Him a child of God ? 

Should it be the miracles ? But no, they belonged 
to the manifestation of Jesus, to His Messianic self- 
attestation. Only they had no effedl at the time when 
they took place; whatever effect they might work, they 
have worked only afterward. Let us see how they are 
to be understood and what they mean. 



191 



X 

THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 

|||| jIesus spoke and testified of the Kingdom of 
|||LU God which had come and was at hand, the 
g|j||g9 sum of all blessedness, and the eternal good 
which God promised before to His own, pre- 
pared for them from the beginning of the world, and 
now at length offered. It does not, indeed, look as 
if all who were in this Kingdom had peace. They 
had still to endure the world-sorrow which others 
have also to bear — yes, perhaps they feel it still more. 
But they can bear it. The Kingdom which they had, or 
for which they still waited, makes them strong to bear 
it. How could He prove this ? Jesus and the King- 
dom belonged together ; what did He give of the good 
of His Kingdom? "Thy sins are forgiven.' ' He 
spoke to the man sick of the palsy, and to the great 
sinner. To bring forgiveness — on this depended and 
toward this was aimed all His work. But just this was 
not acknowledged. " He blasphemeth; who can for- 
give sins but one, even God? M said they who were 
there in the presence of the man sick of the palsy, 
the scribes and Pharisees. By what means did Jesus 
prove that He can do this ? For He had to prove it ; 
He was not yet crucified and risen. 

All that Jesus spoke, His whole manifest career, 
was accompanied by miracles, and, indeed, by such 
miracles as had never been in Israel. Israel was the 

192 



A HK MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 



people who had, as no other people, a distindt and 
clear conception of the closed, orderly sequence of life 
and experience in nature and history from which se- 
quence, by his own strength, no man can escape, even 
tho one means to master it, and to a certain point really 
does master it. It is flatly wrong to affirm that Israel 
was accustomed at every stage of its history to experi- 
ence miracles. The contrary rather is correcft. Only 
at decisive points of Israel's history have miracles 
happened, as at the deliverance from Egypt's bondage 
through Moses, at the appearance of the two prophets 
Elijah and Elisha in the time of Israel's apostasy, and 
in connection with some individual prophets — e.g., 
Isaiah at the time of Hezekiah's sickness. It was be- 
cause miracles belonged to the great critical times that 
they expedled miracles of the Messiah — yes, a mir- 
acle above all miracles — and were not satisfied with 
what He had already done, but sought of Him a 
sign from heaven. It was not, by the very supposi- 
tion, something normal which they sought, and which 
they believed they could find everywhere, but, on the 
contrary, something very extraordinary. This miracle, 
however, Jesus will not perform, but instead, in the 
most severe manner, he sends back the sign-seeking 
Pharisees and Sadducees. "An evil and adulterous 
generation seeketh after a sign ; and there shall no 
sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. 
And He left them, and departed, ' ' we read in Matthew 
xvi : 4. And this is characteristic of the supposed prim- 
itive view of our evangelists. Jesus refuses this miracle 
with the same gravity with which He had spoken to 
the nobleman who asked help for his son at the point 

193 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

of death: " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will 
in no wise believe/ ' and for the same reason which led 
Him to forego a miracle at Nazareth, His home: because 
they believed not in Him. Otherwise, however, He did 
miracles not only where they believed in Him, but 
even where they did not yet believe in Him, and where 
no decision against Him had yet been made or was 
expedled, so that, in case men would not believe His 
words, they could nevertheless believe on account of 
the works which He did. 

These works, His miracles, were all, however, of 
a special kind, like and yet again unlike all the 
miracles which had previously been done in Israel. 
He performed no miracle to protect Himself against 
His enemies, as did Moses and Elijah. Once only 
did Jesus perform a judgment-miracle, and then only 
to typify how Israel will fare by continuing in disbe- 
lief. This was the cursing of the fig-tree, which 
against its nature had leaves but no fruit, and which 
immediately withered away at Jesus' word. Once it 
might seem as if Jesus had used His wondrous power 
for Himself, for His own benefit — namely, when He 
rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and 
there was a calm. But He did this not for Himself. 
In the midst of the raging of the storm and sea He 
w r as in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and only when 
the disciples awoke Him, and said unto Him, i d Master, 
carest Thou not that we perish ? ' ' did He rebuke the 
wind and the sea — yet He also rebuked the disciples for 
their little faith. For as people who believed in Jesus 
they should have known and considered that nothing 
evil could befall them as long as Jesus was with them. 

194 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 

They had, therefore, not needed this miracle, which 
Jesus did out of pure forbearance and mercy toward 
them. 

The miracles which Jesus did were all healing won- 
ders, and were not done for the benefit of those who 
laid wait for Him, to find something against Him, but 
for the benefit of those who came to Him, brought 
their sick to Him, or came in their own distress to be 
helped by Him. It was, moreover, not an excep- 
tion, as in the case of the Old Testament history, 
when He did miracles ; it was rather an excep- 
tion, as at Nazareth, when He did no miracles. 
Thus we may say that the day of His work ended 
and the night commenced only with His seizure in 
the garden. Wherever He went and stayed He did 
miracles, and ' c as many as touched Him were made 
whole/ ' This had never before happened in Israel. 
Therefore, John the Baptist, when he was in prison 
and heard the works of Christ, sent to Him and said 
unto Him : " Art thou He that cometh, or look we for 
another ? ' ' For if any man might expedl that the 
Messiah should assist him and obtain for him, through 
His miraculous power, his rights and liberty, and im- 
prisonment and death for his enemies, this was, as 
one would think, John the Baptist, the forerunner of the 
Messiah. Christ's answer authenticates the univer- 
sality of His miracles, and proves that the time of 
f ulfiling the prophesy has come : ' ' The blind receive 
their sight and the lame walk ; the lepers are cleansed 
and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the 
poor have good tidings preached to them. ' ' But He does 
not help the Baptist; he must suffer and die; and Christ 

195 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

adds, ' ' Blessed is he whosoever shall find no occasion 
of stumbling in Me" — certainly a singular prophecy. 
The Kingdom of God is at hand : " But if I, by the 
finger of God, or by the Spirit of God, cast out devils, 
then, without you knowing it, is the Kingdom of God 
come upon you." The Kingdom of God is at hand, 
and those who should enjoy it first profit nothing and 
gain nothing by it. How is that ? How issues and what 
means this double form of miracles, and what is their 
difference from all former miracles which have been 
wrought ? Miracles are wonderful works, events pro- 
duced by mediate causes undiscernible by us or not 
existing for us — thus they have been defined. Are 
these of Jesus really different from the Old Testament 
miracles ? 

What are miracles ? This is the first question. Is 
it really enough to say, according to the time-worn ob- 
jection to miracles, as well as the newest explanation 
of Harnack, that they are phenomena or effedls which 
are not to be explained from the known, unbroken order 
of nature and history ? This only means ' * Accord- 
ing to the unbroken order known to us" — i.e., the 
unbroken order known at the time when the phenom- 
ena took place. Certain miracles which are abso- 
lutely not to be explained — as the stilling of the storm 
on the sea — are roundly and emphatically denied. 
"That a storm on the sea has been stilled by a word," 
says Harnack, u we do not believe and will never 
again believe. ' ' But the healing miracles, so far as 
their historicity is conceded, are regarded as miracles — 
i.e., as influences of a firm will and a convinced faith 
even upon the bodily life which ' ' interest us like mira- 

196 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 

cles. ' ' Harnack says : ' ' Surely miracles do not happen, 
but there is much that is miraculous and inexplica- 
ble/ ' " We are not locked up in a blind and brutal 
course of nature, but . . . nature serves higher pur- 
poses, and one may so come up against it by an inner 
Divine power that all things shall work together for 
good." This "coming up against nature* ' yields 
us ' ' experiences' ' which are ever felt ' ' as miracles, ' ' 
and these experiences are inseparable from every 
"higher religion/' and, indeed, are experiences for 
the life of the individual as well as the great course of 
the history of humanity. "How clean and clear/ ' 
Harnack ironically continues, "must be the think- 
ing of a religious man who, while he himself is able 
to adhere to the knowledge of the inviolability of the 
limited course of events, nevertheless can be surprised 
that even great minds are not able clearly to separate 
these realms." 

But all this would only or chiefly cover effedls of 
faith or of the firm will upon events that happen to 
one's own person. It is remarkable, however, that 
all the Biblical miracle accounts, and more especially 
those of the New Testament, refer, not to effedts of 
miracle- workers on their own persons, but to eifedls 
on others. From beginning to end Christ refuses 
to perform miracles for His own benefit, especially for 
the preservation of His own life. As related in 
the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul waits not for a 
miracle by which he should be helped; and when at 
Melitta he is bitten by a viper without being hurt, 
the miracle happens not for his sake, but for those 
who saw it. Christ does not provide for His own food 

197 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

by a miracle, as God once cared for Elijah through 
the ravens, and as Elijah himself provided the oil in 
the cruse and the meal in the barrel of the widow at 
Zarephath. Christ's miracles are throughout effedts 
on others and for others. Are these to be explained 
by the phrase • ' The influence of a firm will and con- 
vinced faith,' ' even upon the bodily life? Perhaps 
they might be explained as instances of hypnosis or 
suggestion? Then they would at once cease to be 
real miracles, and from that hour on they could no 
more claim religious importance where their nature 
should be known. They appear, then, in the light of 
delusion from religious motives and for religious ob- 
jects. If this imposture should not be ascribed to 
the apostles and evangelists, in so far as they have 
been themselves deceived, should it be charged, never- 
theless, upon Jesus ? Or if these miracles have not been 
produced by hypnosis or suggestion, but by a real in- 
fluence of strong will and conviction, has the historian 
elsewhere in history perceived such influences, save 
in the tales and legends of the middle ages? But 
when with Harnack one still allows ' ' something impen- 
etrable ' ' in the accounts of the miracles, which may 
possibly become comprehensible to future generations, 
and the paradox of which is entirely to disappear, one 
will be obliged to say that a weaker argument against 
the miracles has hardly ever come to light. It would 
have been more intelligible to acknowledge the ' ' im- 
penetrability ' ' of all the accounts and to deny their 
truth than to make this unhappy effort at an explana- 
tion of their origin, for this comes to the same thing. 
Neither is this effort to acknowledge miracles with- 

198 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 

out allowing them to be miracles justified by citing the 
" certain contempt " with which Jesus Himself is said 
to speak of His miracles. We have rather to put 
together the fa6ls: that Jesus reproaches the nobleman, 
"Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in no wise 
believe," that He refers the Baptist in the prison to 
the wonders which happen, and that He says to the 
Jews, ' ' Tho ye believe not Me, believe the works 
which I do in My Father's name." According to 
this, miracles must belong to the person and office of 
Jesus the Messiah. But the question is, How ? Mir- 
acles, and this is the point, were not common in Israel. 
On heathenish territory miracles never were wrought 
by Jesus, and He refuses to do a miracle on the 
daughter of the Syrophenician woman. Only after 
the mother had humbled herself still deeper, as once 
Naaman, the captain of the King of Syria, had done, 
does He help in an exceptional way. For the woman 
has shown faith, great faith. He heals the servant of 
the centurion at Capernaum, but on Jewish soil and at 
the intercession of the Jews. There must in every 
case be included all the special features by which the 
peculiarity of all miracles, as well as the distindl 
peculiarity of Christ's miracles, is marked. These fea- 
tures are the more important, since they are not to be 
accounted for as a tradition knowingly set forth as 
such, but are inextricably interwoven with the fadls 
themselves. 

One thing, however, is possible — namely, that the 
miracle accounts were the expression of a belief in the 
hearing of prayer. Israel, as we have stated, had the 
strong consciousness of a firmly closed connection of 

199 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

cause and effect in nature and history. For this very 
reason the pious clung to the God who had chosen them, 
that they should not be ground by this inexorable order; 
and they were heard when they prayed, or thought 
they were heard. What they then experienced in this 
manner in connection with their life of prayer, directed 
to God and drawing from God, was in the narrative 
developed by their shaping fancy into miracle. Is this 
so ? No, not if there is hearing of prayer ! If there 
is not, then indeed we shall have still less miracle, for 
it would follow that there is no God at all who a6ts 
freely and demands free faith on the part of men, 
and what we call faith would remain either merely a 
compliance with God's hidden ways, or a contented 
and happy confidence in God's wisdom which has 
ordered everything from eternity, with a convicftion 
that not the brutal world-order but God's wisdom 
triumphs. For a free adlion of God, and especially 
for an adtion of that God whom we can induce with 
our prayers, there is no room. But so long as prayer 
is an indispensable expression of our religious life, and 
daily hearing of prayer is believed and experienced by 
us, so long do we also distinguish between hearing of 
prayer and miracle. It is not that hearing of prayer 
is a miracle which has happened in consequence of our 
praying. The true miracle originates from Divine 
initiative. For miracles, too, and especially the mira- 
cles of Jesus, are a hearing of prayer. But tho, indeed, 
miracles are hearings of prayer, still it is not the nature 
of the hearing of prayer to be a miracle — at least, so 
long as we do not, with Harnack, decide to regard every 
influence of freedom upon the forced order of nature 
200 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OE JESUS 

and history as a paradox and therefore as a miracle. 
The Lord refers His believers to the hearing of prayer, 
which they are to experience daily, but not to miracles. 
Hearing of prayer is the daily orderly experience of 
His children ; miracles are not daily, are also some- 
thing extraordinary for the children of the house of 
God. The hearing of prayer belongs to that govern- 
ment of God in history of which it is said that He 
fashions the hearts of men, and even cares for the 
birds of the heaven, the flowers of the field, the spar- 
rows on the roof, that not one of them fall to the 
ground without His will. This His disciples shall 
remember, and when they are brought before kings 
and princes for judgment they shall not be anxious 
how or what they shall speak, for it shall be given 
them in that hour. But such giving is no miracle, tho 
it is known and felt as a gift, as an effedl of God's grace. 
Miracles are, indeed, hearing of prayer, but hearing of 
that prayer which is for miracles. But we do not pray 
for miracles unless we have to pray for them, because 
the distress of the congregation and of God's witnesses 
against the sin of the world impels us to it. Jesus 
prayed for them, His disciples have prayed for them, 
but not arbitrarily ; for a miracle is something very 
special. The miracle takes place through the Word 
and at the Word. When the Word is spoken it comes 
to pass. Recovery from sickness which gradually 
takes place, not at once and completely, at the 
Word, can be God's gift, a hearing of prayer, but it 
is no miracle. Neither do miracles happen by way 
of accelerating a process of nature. This they never 
are, not even in the turning of water into wine at the 

201 



the essence of Christianity 

marriage in Cana, nor still less in the feeding of the 
five thousand, and of the four thousand in the wilder- 
ness. Where a miracle takes place the connection be- 
tween the Word and the event is always manifest, tho 
not to them to whom the Word is impotent. Save 
that the greater part of these beholders may feel the 
need to inquire more seriously into the relation of effeCt 
and cause, all miracles appear to them to belong only 
in the mass of things and events not understood or 
conceivable, of which the course of the world is at all 
times full. On this account Jesus' miracles are mira- 
cles only for those who followed Him either for a time 
or always. To such they are indeed real. For the 
others they mean nothing, and thus we understand 
why Jesus performs no miracles where He finds no 
faith at all. 

But what are miracles, and what do they denote ? 
They only happen in Israel, among the people chosen 
for redemption. They thus stand in connection with 
this destiny of Israel, with redemption ; they are deeds 
of that God who will show to His people by good- 
ness and severity that He alone is the God of redemp- 
tion, who will not expose His people to the law of 
sin and guilt, which is to say to the law of develop- 
ment, but will deliver them from perdition. Whether 
they are miracles of judgment or miracles of grace, 
they are always the exaCt contrary of what one would 
expert to occur in accordance with the natural order 
of things, in the expeCted place, and at the ex- 
pected time. They are inte?itionally cou?iter-effe£2s 
against this natural order of things, and, therefore, de- 
cidedly against the orderly sequence of nature ; not in 

202 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 

general, for this general order remains till the end 
comes, but in the special case, which is thereby taken 
out of the order without injury to the order itself. 
This world- order is in a thousand cases a pressure, a 
burden for those who suffer thereby, and we, too, 
seek to oppose it — we by affecfting other causes, God 
with His might and power by abolishing the cause. 
The suffering, tho not always a result of a certain 
sin, stands, nevertheless, in an indissoluble connection 
with the sin of the world. If there were no sin and 
suffering, miracles had never happened. But where 
God intervenes with His revelation, not merely a com- 
munication about Himself, but with His own practical 
proof of Himself to bring about the redemption of the 
sinful race, there we meet with miracles. Indeed, not 
everywhere, not wherever men may happen to think 
that they need one, but only according to His own 
counsel, only in the harmonious ordering of His ways, 
and only in the very remarkable conditions of this 
Divine order. In the time of the Old Covenant 
miracles happen for the purpose of judgment and 
grace, as through Moses and Elijah. With Christ 
and through Him they happen in connection with His 
office as Redeemer only as miracles of help and salva- 
tion. They are the infallible sign of the Redeemer, 
who came at last and is present with us. He must 
needs do wonders ; it is an exception when, as in 
Nazareth, He can do no miracle, not as if He had been 
lacking in power, but because men refused Him from 
the very outset. Where distress and misery come in 
His way He helps — of course, only w T hen He meets 
with them on His appointed way, on the ways of His 

203 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

calling. He does not in the whole country and with 
one stroke turn all lamentation and all sorrow into joy. 
He lets His forerunner, John, suffer ; He does not 
help him, who, humanly speaking, had the first claim 
that the Messiah should show in him His won- 
drous power, the might of His Messiahship. But 
Jesus says : ' * Blessed is he whosoever shall find no 
occasion of stumbling in Me" ; therefore, suffer, die, 
and believe ! In other cases, however, He helps, and, 
indeed, not only where He is asked, but also unso- 
licited, as at the marriage feast in Cana, in the feeding 
of the five thousand and four thousand, in the healing 
of the sick by the pool Bethesda, and in the healing of 
the man born blind. For His people are to have a 
sign of the arrival of Him who has the power to help 
the whole world. This power is the sign of the 
Messiah. On this account, moreover, the people that 
had witnessed the wondrous feeding of the multitude 
wanted to seize Him and make Him King, as if men 
had to make Him King whom God has chosen as such. 
On this account He groaned in Himself at the tomb of 
I^azarus, because the death of Lazarus at the hand of 
Satan is an attempt to prove that Jesus can not be the 
Messiah, since He is not able to protedl even His near- 
est friends. Therefore, praying, He says: "Father, 
I thank Thee that Thou hearest Me always," and calls 
L,azarus back into life, tho he has already been four 
days in the grave and decay has already begun. 

Thus, Jesus' miracles are testimonies of His vocation, 
and, indeed, the healing and helping miracles are wit- 
nesses that He came not to condemn but to save. 
Thus it is that He combines in the answer which He 

204 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 

sends to the Baptist in His temptation, His miracles, 
and the preaching of the Gospel ; thus it is that the 
universality of the miracles is just as truly emphasized 
in this manner as in the apocalyptic vision of the new 
heaven and the new earth : ' ' Neither shall there be 
any more mourning, nor crying, nor pain, and He 
shall wipe away every tear from their eyes." Thus, 
also, the miracles of Jesus are not merely signs but 
prophecies, not for our time, and in general neither 
for the time of the history of the world, nor for that 
of the history of the Church, but for the great wonder 
of the final term, the completion of the work of salva- 
tion. 

Just at this point the question as to the possibility 
and reality of miracles comes in. Whoever once has 
suffered misery and distress knows very well that all 
this sorrow comes from the unbroken order in nature 
and history, within which we are shut up as sinners 
and as accessories. Our longing is a longing after re- 
demption. Not that we could become lords over this 
world order. The longing after the liberty of the 
glory of the children of God, as Paul calls it, is "some- 
thing else. The Christian is not to despair, least of 
all is he to be put out of humor and be alienated from 
faith through his suffering, whether merited or unmer- 
ited. He is to have and retain peace in God's grace, 
and even in weakness he is to experience, like Paul, 
the power of grace, which helps him not only to be- 
lieve, but also to bear witness of the wondrous undi- 
minishing of the grace of God. And he is to hope, 
hope in a deed of God our Savior, in the deed of the 
great renewing of the world according to His Word : 

205 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

" Behold, I make all things new ! " This renewing is 
not the result of development, but the contrary. The 
result of development would be perdition. The res- 
toration of the world is the end of God's ways for 
our redemption and renewing, and these ways are 
from beginning to end the very opposite of all self- 
evident truth. The method here is not development 
but transformation, as the individual can not develop 
himself into a child of God, into a new creature, so 
neither can the world into a new world. In the ways 
of God, which, step by step, are to bring the world to 
be a new world, the experience repeats itself : ' ' Where 
sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly." 
If we are convinced of what Jesus shall sometime do 
we are also convinced of what He once did. The 
certainty of the miracle of the final renewal of the 
world carries with it and works out the certainty 
of faith with regard to the miracles which He did. 
We can not have and we do not need a Savior who 
can not do miracles and who has not really done 
them. 

The working forces of Jesus, the power with which 
He, the man of low estate, was endowed for His office, 
wrought in Him to such effedl that He was able Him- 
self to suffer and to die solely to help others. The help 
which He brought to us is wondrous help. It is pro- 
vided in the facft that He can do what none else can 
do — neither father, nor mother, nor the most powerful 
on earth: take away sins. He Himself unites this 
ability with His miracle-adlivity w 7 hen He asks the 
murmuring scribes: " Whether it is easier to say, Thy 
sins are forgiven, or to say, Arise, and walk? " The 

206 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 

easier adit, the miracle, is, however, so great that it can 
only be a sign of a greater, yes, the greatest — a sign, 
namely, of the power to forgive sins. For forgiveness 
never was and never is something that stands by it- 
self. It is and remains connected with Jesus. It is 
connected with Him when He says at the institution 
of the Supper: "This is my body, my blood, given 
and shed for you unto remission of sins ' ' ; it is con- 
nected with Him again when He brings it to pass in 
the case of the man sick of the palsy; it is connedted 
with Him still again for David, for Abraham, because 
they believed in that God whose eternal counsel it was 
to realize all His thoughts of grace in and through 
Jesus. In the same power by which Jesus foregoes 
everything, so that forgiveness became and remained 
ours, he performs the miracles. They are partly to 
effect the understanding of His calling as a Savior 
which embraces the whole world, partly to effect faith 
in those who wish to understand Him, and partly for 
those who already believe in Him, that they may 
anticipate in their experience the much greater things 
which they shall yet see. 

From this it becomes also evident why Jesus did not 
desire His miracles to become known in the land, since 
as to their purpose and tenor they became only intelligi- 
ble in conneclio?i with His Gospel and His person. On 
the other hand, the importance that He Himself 
attached to them, and wdiich the people's expectation 
attached to them, becomes very evident when we read 
that of the multitude many believed in Him, and they 
said: "When Christ [i.e., the Messiah] shall come, 
will He do more signs than those which this man hath 

207 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

done ? ' ' Thus it becomes evident, further, that we 
can not at all dispense with the miracles in the history 
of God's self- attestation for our redemption or in the 
history of revelation, and especially in the history of 
Jesus and the accomplishment of our redemption. 
This is not to say that we can not dispense with them. 
Not because w T e could believe in Jesus only through 
them and by their assistance ; this could not be true 
of us, because we "Bee them not, but must be informed 
of them. We can not dispense with them because we 
know Him and believe in Him as the L,ord of all 
things to whom all is given by His Father. The mir- 
acles show us bound up with that which we believe 
and in which we hope. We believe not in Jesus for the 
sake of the miracles , but we believe the miracles for Jesus'* 
sake. The history of Jesus were not the history of the 
Messiah, and therewith the history of the effectuation of 
our redemption, if it were not at the same time a history 
full of wonders. They belong to the history, and can 
not be separated from it. He who gives them up must 
give up the Messiahship of Jesus — must state, like Har- 
nack, that Jesus does not belong to the Gospel. They 
are necessary, but they are necessary not primarily 
but secondarily. 

Finally, we may now the better understand the lack 
of miracles in the Church in later historical times > in our 
own time. We know and have the greater miracle, 
the miracle of our pardon : "In Christ we have our 
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our 
trespasses." Therefore, we should now wait for the 
greatest miracle: the completion of the redemption. 
We have the Savior, and in Him the eternal super- 

208 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 



mundane life, something which no one knows or 
has except he who has also the Lord Christ. We can 
and needs must testify of Christ, so that from man to 
man not only the news but the possession also of this 
salvation, faith in Jesus and faith in the redemption, 
shall be transmitted. And where we testify of Him by 
word or example there He Himself works upon those 
who see and hear it, and attests to them His Word, 
and thereby Himself. This is the wondrous presence 
which belongs to Him and to no one else, a presence 
in which He proves Himself completely for all that He 
is — an entirely different reality from what we should 
have if He were only to give us miracles or the signs 
of what He is and wills. He does no sign, but attests 
and proves Himself as Lord, as Redeemer. He par- 
dons ; this is His true work, His real work, as a 
Savior. On this account, when He expedls us to deny 
ourselves and to suffer and bear what the course of 
the world enjoins us to sacrifice, suffer, and bear, we 
can do it. Jesus never promised to make an end to 
this before the end of all comes. He has only said, 
and thus far in every case has kept His word : ' ' And 
every one that has left house, or brethren, or sisters, 
or father, or mother, or children, or lands for My 
name's sake, and for the Gospel's sake, shall receive a 
hundredfold now in this time with persecutions, and 
in the world to come life everlasting. ' ' We can be 
without the miracles, the less, the merely temporal 
sign, since we have the greater — namely, the presence 
of the Lord Himself, of our Redeemer, if we only wish 
to know Him. To that great day which impends over 
us we can forego the miracles and can suffer, hard as 

209 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

it often may be for us, even as Paul did forego, tho it 
was hard for him, when the L,ord, at his three times 
reiterated prayer for the removal of the thorn in the 
flesh, gave only the answer (Paul would have afterward 
said, the glorious answer) : " My grace is sufficient 
for thee ; for My power is made perfect in weak- 
ness. ' ' 

On the other hand, the Lord promised to His dis- 
ciples : " He that believeth in Me, the works that I 
do, shall he do also ; and greater works than these 
shall he do, because I go unto the Father." This 
word, too, is fulfilled, and is daily fulfilled. The 
greater works are not works as the Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees meant them, who, dissatisfied with all which 
Jesus had thus far done, asked a sign from heaven, 
which Jesus denied unto them. The greater works 
are the appropriation of salvation, the forgiveness of 
sins, and thereby of power and strength from above, 
and for the higher life, which we need, and the com- 
munication of the Spirit to those who hear the Word 
and wish to believe. For men are to learn to believe 
through men, receive mercy, obtain the assurance of 
the forgiveness of their sins ; they are, indeed, to re- 
ceive forgiveness through men, which shall hold good 
in heaven. Whoever receives the spirit of faith, or 
has learned by the Spirit to believe in his own redemp- 
tion, has received here below the greatest thing possi- 
ble to be received by men. Yet, tho Paul's word has 
said to him, "Ye, too, were bought with a price," 
or IyUther has repeated to him that which, as is re- 
ported, the friar had said to him, " I believe in the 
forgiveness of sins, ' ' or some living brother has said, 

210 



THE MIRACLE-MINISTRY OF JESUS 



"Thy sins are forgiven; fear not, only believe !" 
— such grace, such communication of salvation, and 
therewith of the powers of the world to come, no one 
has received if it should be established that Jesus has 
not completed His work. 



211 



XI 



THE WORK OF JESUS; OR, HIS SUFFERING AND 
DEATH, HIS RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 



1p VKN the miracles did not make Jesus known by 
**** x them as the Messiah whom God sent as the 
Upll Son of God. Individuals, as one of the ten 
lepers, might return and give God the honor; 
the total impression, the real success was everywhere 
only a fleeting one, a passing surprise at the mighty 
man, an ephemeral fascination for the great deed of 
God which happened through Him. So the wonder- 
ing thousands w r ho crow r ded upon Him to hear the 
Word of God afterward went their w 7 ay. They either 
forgot the Word of the Kingdom, their greatest hopes 
and their greatest good, or they received it with joy 
till the time of temptation, when they fell away, or 
they wished to combine both Kingdom of Heaven and 
kingdom of the earth, everlasting and temporal good, 
care for the Kingdom of God and its righteousness 
and care for the earthly interests, and the Word was 
choked in them. Jesus felt himself obliged to speak 
in parables of the Kingdom of Heaven and its form in 
this world and time, because this form which it took 
and had to take on account of Israel's unbelief was 
with difficulty perceived even by the disciples them- 
selves, but could not be perceived at all by unbe- 
lievers. The opposition to Jesus became greater and 
greater — so great that even the faith of the disciples 

212 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



would seem to have been endangered by it. When, 
therefore, the time came that was to bring all things to 
a crisis, and Jesus had set His face steadfastly to go for 
the Last Supper from Galilee to Jerusalem by the way 
of Samaria, while in the neighborhood of the city of 
Caesarea Philippi He asked His disciples: " Who do 
men say that I (or the Son of Man) am ? ' ' Jesus knew 
that they did not acknowledge Him as the Messiah, 
the Son of God; that they denied to Him the predicate, 
" Son of God." Knowing this, He put the question, 
in considering which it makes naturally no difference 
whether He said: " What ami?" or " What is the 
Son of Man ? ' ' The disciples w r ere to make up their 
minds upon what the people say and think of Him. 
They must know and recognize Him as something more 
than this judgment of the populace. It was now to be 
made clear whether they had enough courage and faith 
and firmness to abide by that which they themselves have 
known. None, say the disciples, knows and confesses 
the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus is something 
great, greater than all men w T hom God ever raised up 
in Israel : one of the ancient prophets ; one who, after 
many, many 3-ears, had returned not from the grave — 
this no one could do any longer — but from the realm 
of death ; a revenajit, therefore he also can do such 
signs. Now Jesus asks: "But who say ye that I 
am ? ' ' The question is, whether the disciples, in the 
face of this semi-acknowledgment and yet complete 
refusal, will abide by that which they have known. 
They are, forsooth, children of their people ; will they 
endure to realize themselves in opposition to all their 
brethren ? Then Peter answers for all of them : 

213 



THE ESvSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

"Thou art Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living 
God ! Thou art the Son of Man, who should be noth- 
ing more than any other, a man born of men, to whose 
Messiahship every one objedls ! Thou art, neverthe- 
less, the Messiah ; Thou art truly the Son of God. ' ' 
And what is signified and included in this fa(5l that 
the Messiah is the Son of God is only to be said and 
to be known in the light of the reality itself. 

Thus Peter expressed his confession and that of his 
codisciples over against the refusal of the whole peo 
pie. Jesus replies that this knowledge and confession 
is the foundation-rock upon which He will build His 
Church. He will gather around Him the people of 
God, the people of the future, no more the whole seed 
of Abraham after the flesh, which has refused this 
acknowledgment, but the people who confess His 
name and retain Him over against the whole people as 
the Messiah. With this confession to Him who is 
the foundation-stone Peter and his codisciples are fel- 
low factors of this foundation which shall bear up the 
entire building of the congregation of God, a founda- 
tion of the temple of God, which also the gates of 
Hades, which devours and retains everything, shall not 
overcome. But in order to gather together this con- 
gregation, something in particular will and must take 
place. And so Jesus commences now to tell His 
disciples — clearly, distinctly, unmistakably — what is 
to come. The Messiah must die — God's Son must go 
into death ! ' ' The Son of Man must suffer many 
things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief 
priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three 
days He shall rise again.' ' He is the Messiah and 

214 



THK WORK OF JESUS 



shall remain the Messiah ; the Son of Man is the Son 
of God ; nothing and no one can change anything as 
to that. There is to be a Messianic congregation, 
such as Israel should be and is not ; He will build 
and He will also protect it against the realm of the 
dead, into which otherwise everything sinks, and He 
will thus prove that He is really the Messiah. But 
His way goes into death and through death. Thus, 
and only thus, can He be the Messiah. 

The disciples could not understand this, and Peter 
commenced to rebuke Him. But Jesus was so serious 
with His word and with His will to be faithful to His 
calling, He felt so deeply the necessity of being the 
Messiah at any rate and at all cost — yes, at the price of 
life — that He turned on Peter as if he was the Satanic 
tempter himself, and said : ' ' Get thee behind Me, 
Satan, for thou mindest not the things of God, but the 
things of men. ' ' It is irrevocable that the Savior whom 
God has given to the world to be the everlasting King 
of His Kingdom, must go through death as if He were 
no King at all. Not as if He were no more King — for 
none has acknowledged Him — but as if He never had 
been a King ! It must come to this: that it looks as if 
He were rejected by God, as if God had drawn away 
His hand from Him. But He shall receive again His 
life, He shall rise again ; He is, nevertheless, the Mes- 
siah — thus, indeed, does He only become the Messiah. 
That He died — precisely this belongs to His calling. 

What Jesus had thus far indicated to His disciples 
and spoken publicly only as in a figure He hence- 
forth expresses repeatedly and openly. From the 
beginning He accepted the necessity of His death, 

215 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

and has never been obliged to exchange at any time 
the illusion of a victorious Messiah quickly gaining 
the people for the picture of a dying Messiah, for 
whom He then only recovered the traits of Messiah by 
His reference to the resurre&ion. There is no surer 
way to death than to become a helper, a savior of sin- 
ners, a savior in the name of God and after God's will. 
Jesus inspects the grounds of the people's opinion, 
which His disciples report to Him. The meaning of 
this general lack of understanding for His calling 
which exists to this day Jesus understands. That 
which the voice of the people denies to Him the Father 
allows to fall to His lot. It is God who glorifies and 
professes Him, saying to the disciples present on the 
mount of transfiguration: "This is my beloved Son, 
hear ye Him." And this declaration assures Him and 
His disciples that this reality remains. But this also 
remains : He must go into death ! Jesus says a 
second time to His disciples : ' ' The Son of Man must 
suffer many things and be set at naught, as it is 
written." He refers them to the Scripture and to the 
fate of all servants of God, to John the Baptist, the 
second Elijah, unto whom men did what they wished. 
From this shall follow that which awaits Him: " The 
Son of Man is delivered up into the hands of men, and 
they shall kill Him; and when He is killed, after three 
days He shall rise again." Once more, therefore, 
He is the Messiah, and remains the Messiah ; but He 
must go into death without contradiction, and only then 
will He be able to prove that He is not merely the 
Messiah. 

The disciples understood not what He meant. They 
216 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



heard the words, they sensed what He said, but the}- 
did not apprehend it. Does He speak figuratively? 
What does He mean when He speaks of death and 
resurrection? They were afraid to ask Him. That 
He could mean literally what He said they regarded 
as entirely precluded. He repeated the announce- 
ment of the suffering a third time, and spoke more 
in detail : ' * Behold, we go up to Jerusalem ; and the 
Son of Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests 
and scribes ; and they shall condemn Him to death, 
and shall deliver Him unto the Gentiles to mock, and 
to scourge, and to crucify; and the third day He shall 
be raised up." Consider now what that means. The 
high priests and scribes, the chief men, the authorities, 
the leaders of God's people, will condemn Him, and 
the Gentiles shall be enabled through them to mock 
Him and to kill Him; and only thus, actually thus, is 
He to be the Messiah, and so is to come again and 
prove it ! Could an Israelite believe this ? No ! The 
answer is found in the request of the sons of Zebedee, 
through their mother Salome, that He might grant 
them to sit on His right and on His left in His glory. 
The other disciples are indignant at this request of 
James and John, who lay in Jesus' bosom, and later 
became the first and the last martyrs respectively of 
the twelve, and at the prerogative which these desired. 
They are reminded by Jesus that the Son of Man, the 
Messiah, whom no one will acknowledge, had not come 
to seek ministry and honor, but to minister and to 
give His life a ransom for many. This too they did 
not understand. How should that be possible ? Jesus 
goes clearly and consciously on His way to death. He 

217 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

enters into Jerusalem exactly according to the proph- 
ecy of Zechariah and Isaiah. No one suspects this, 
no one understands Him. They understand, indeed, 
that He speaks very seriously with the people, but 
they did not know that with this and with the deed at 
the tomb of Lazarus He has brought to maturity the 
decision of the leaders to kill Him. When, in conse- 
quence of the resuscitation of Lazarus, all people came 
unto Him, the Sanhedrin asks no more what it means. 
At the proposal of Caiaphas they rather decide to kill 
Him, for — thus old Caiaphas confirms his proposal — 
"it is expedient for us that one man should die for 
the people, and that the whole nation perish not." 
Thus God compels the high priest to do unwillingly 
that which belongs to his priestly office and to give 
expression to the w T ill of God, even while he allows 
only the hatred of his heart to speak. 

Jesus celebrates with His disciples, who understand 
nothing yet, the Passover feast, the redemption-meal 
of the Old Testament in remembrance of the past de- 
liverance from Egypt, and now of the greater deliver- 
ance through the Messiah guaranteed thereby and 
ever since desired. "With desire I have desired to 
eat this Passover with you before I suffer," saith 
Jesus. It is the last Passover of the Old Covenant. 
Now it can guarantee nothing more, and has nothing 
more to prophesy, for the redemption itself is now ac- 
complished. Jesus then institutes for His disciples a 
redemption-meal, the Lord's evening-meal, with bread 
and wine — the Lord's Supper, as we call it — and says : 
"This is My body, My blood, given for you and 
poured out for you for the remission of sins. ' ' Did 

218 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



they understand it ? Certainly not. They anticipate 
that something is coming, the fulfilment of all their 
hopes, but they think it quite otherwise than as it 
in facT; occurred. Therefore they commence right 
away to contend again as to who among them is the 
greatest in the Kingdom of God. And this almost in 
the same moment in which Jesus had just said unto 
them : " One of you shall betray me ! " Frightened, 
they ask : "Is it I, Lord? " Jesus advises them, con- 
firms their hope in the Kingdom of God, and says 
to Peter the severe words: " Simon, Simon, behold, 
Satan asked to have thee, that he might sift thee as 
wheat; but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith 
fail not ! ' ' But neither he nor the other disciples 
listen to it. Jesus declares unto them : " All ye shall 
be offended in Me this night and give up the faith." 
None believes His affirmation. He says to Peter : 
' ' Before the cock crows twice, thou shalt deny me 
thrice." Peter answers: c< I am ready to go to prison 
with Thee and to die w r ith Thee ' ' ; for he thinks not 
that Jesus can be imprisoned and be led to death, and 
he is therefore ready to defy the whole world, since it 
can not possibly triumph. 

But Jesus' fate now begins to be fulfilled. With 
His disciples He goes into the garden called Gethsem- 
ane, whither He had been wont at other times to go to 
pray. By prayer He will prepare Himself for that 
which He clearly sees before Him. Three disciples, 
Peter and James and John, who were the nearest to 
Him, He takes with Him, that they may watch and 
pray with Him. They anticipate nothing yet. But 
it is hard to bear what is to come : that His own 

219 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 



people, the people of promise, should kill Him, the 
promised One, the first-born brother — who can con- 
ceive it ? Is Israel now to add that sin to all its sins, 
and to its unbelief ? Has the measure of sins become 
so full that nothing more is left except for Him to 
suffer and to drink the cup which men offer to Him ? 
Has the Father irrevocably decided that He must 
drink it ? Can He not hinder this outbreak of sin ? 
Jesus is ready to submit unreservedly to the Father's 
will, but must it come to pass that His brothers are to 
bring Him, their brother, to death ? Is there no other 
way of salvation ? God has, indeed, power over every- 
thing — can He not prevent that Jesus shall suffer this 
and die ? Yes, He has the power, He can hinder it, 
but only through judgment. Then every mouth must 
grow dumb which opens against Jesus, each hand 
wither which is extended against Him ; but where re- 
mains, then, the forgiveness and the mercy? Then 
the end of Israel, the end of the world, the great judg- 
ment-day of God will have come. No! by this suffer- 
ing alone can there come grace, forgiveness, and de- 
liverance. He must suffer, He must go through this 
depth, in order that, with this sin, all other sins may 
not be imputed to the people. He must fight alone 
this struggle, for His most intimate disciples are not 
able even to look upon Jesus' struggle of the soul, 
still less to watch with Him, w T ere it only for one hour. 
To the end Jesus remains true to His calling, to be the 
Savior who saves His people from all their sins. He 
says not : ' ' Father, it is too hard; I can bear no more ! ' ' 
He received the strengthening which He needed in 
order to be able to die, as having no will of His own ; 

220 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



and yet with a will obedient to the will of the Father, 
He rose up from prayer, and said to His disciples : 
" Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is 
betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be 
going : behold he is at hand that betrayeth me. ' ' And 
thus He went to meet death, the death of the cross — 
at once a device for inflidting capital punishment, a 
pillory, and an instrument of torture. 

The traitor comes, and with him a great multitude 
with swords and staves, sent by the chief priests and 
elders of Israel. Judas, adting as if he were the truest 
friend of Jesus, salutes and kisses Him. But Jesus 
can not be deceived. By virtue of His calling, He 
needed not to ask any one, for He Himself knew what 
was in man, and already long ago, yes, from the very 
beginning, He had seen through Judas. But He had 
borne with him, and had shown him all love — the 
greatest love which a man can experience. Even at 
the Last Supper Jesus had said to Judas : ' ' That thou 
doest, do quickly'' — thus giving him a sign that He 
knew him, in order that he might repent yet in the 
last hour if he so desired. Judas had not repented, but 
went out, night about him and night in him. With 
pain Jesus had remembered him, the lost child in His 
high priestly prayer; had spoken of the lost child with 
sorrow to the disciples when He said : ' ' Good were it 
for that man if he had not been born." Now as he 
comes as leader of an armed multitude, Judas must hear 
that he can not deceive Jesus. For years Judas had 
never applied to himself the word concerning the one 
disciple who is a devil. Now he is to know why Jesus 
has suffered him so long. " Judas, betrayest thou 

221 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 



the Son of Man with a kiss?" The servants come 
upon Jesus to seize Him. " Whom seek ye? " Jesus 
asked them ; and when they say, * * Jesus of Nazareth, ' ' 
He saith, " I am He," and the power of this word 
shows to them the power of this Nazarene, who as a 
Nazarene, as they thought, could on no account be 
the Messiah. He throws them to the ground as a 
sign that, if He is not willing, the whole world can do 
nothing against Him. As with this multitude, so all 
armies sent out against Him would fall to the ground. 
But will he exercise this power ? No! ' * This is your 
hour, and the power of darkness," says Jesus, and 
gives Himself voluntarily into the hands of His ene- 
mies. For He would rather die than destroy even one 
of them. Peter, who had drawn the sword — perhaps to 
make good his word — had already been reproved; the 
wound inflicted by him had been healed, and he had 
been told : ' ' Thinkest thou that I can not beseech My 
Father, and He shall even now send Me more than 
twelve legions of angels ? How then should the Scrip- 
tures be fulfilled ? ' ' which prophesied of the redemption 
and whose word is authoritative even for the fate of 
the Messiah. In them we read not merely, "Thou 
hast made Me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied 
Me with thine iniquities, ' ' but they also speak of the 
suffering of all servants of God, and therefore also of 
the suffering of the servant of God whose office it is to 
suffer and to die, that the world perish not — as it is 
written : ' ' Surely He hath borne our griefs, and car- 
ried our sorrows : yet we did esteem Him stricken, 
smitten of God, and afffidled. But He was wounded 
for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniqui- 

222 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



ties : the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, 
and with His stripes we are healed. ' ' 

The way leads now to the Sanhedrin, the highest 
tribunal of the Jews, which at this time had only to 
judge particulars in religious matters and questions. 
Jesus does not defend Himself, for every defense were 
opposition to the fate that threatened Him, and, if 
successful, would lead only to the condemnation 
of His people and thereby of the world. On this 
account He neither answers the former high priest 
Annas, who had no right at all to question Him, 
nor does He defend Himself against the false wit- 
nesses who were hired to testify against Him, and 
who, notwithstanding, could not bring a unanimous 
testimony against Him. But when the officiating high 
priest Caiaphas adjures Him officially, so that every- 
thing — affirmation, negation, silence — is an oath, and 
when the question which is destined to bring about 
His death is thus formulated: ' ' Art thou the Messiah, 
the Son of the Blessed, the Son of Jehovah?'' Jesus 
can no more keep silence. Now He gives the answer 
for which He is ready to die, and for which His death 
is to atone according to the intention of His judges, 
but which His death shall confirm, according to His 
own intention and the Father's counsel ; it is the 
answer by which He confirms with an oath before the 
face of the judging God, and in view of eternity — that 
He is the Messiah, and that they all (His judges and 
all who now reject Him) shall see Him sitting at the 
right hand of power and coming on the clouds of 
heaven. For no other reason, therefore, would He 
have to die — this Jesus' answer states — than because 

223 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 



He claims to be and is the Messiah. To this He 
swears, for this He receives His sentence. There is 
still time for His judges to see what wrong they are 
about to do. But high priests and elders, chosen for 
the very purpose of seeing to it that the people do 
not forfeit their future, and that they should expe- 
rience the salvation of God, put themselves into the 
most complete opposition imaginable to their official 
duty, and condemn Him who, if Divine right were 
to decide, was alone worthy of life among a whole 
people deserving of death, and who alone was able 
to save the life of sinners. The earthly high priest 
condemns the eternal high priest ; this is the re- 
sult of the history of a people which existed only for 
this eternal high priest, the Messiah chosen by God. 
The history of men, among whom nominally and 
finally reason always dominates, never brings it to 
truth and salvation, but to something quite the con- 
trary. Here reason was only on the side of God and 
Jesus ; the world passed its sentence against them. 
Does it not do the same to-day, think you ? 

Disgrace and mockery follow the sentence of death, 
and the merciless brutality of the judges and the 
guard, the hatred intensified through their conscious- 
ness of the greatness of their offense, outrages the 
Holy One of God. Mockingly the soldiers ask Jesus 
to prove Himself a prophet by telling the names of 
His tormentors. Jesus, however, mentioned no names; 
no one should ever think that He could not forgive 
and forget, and every one who afterward might think 
of the incident would be able to say : u He knew me, 
indeed, but mentioned not my name, and would not 

224 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



mention it out of pure mercy ! ' ' Jesus has another 
trouble resting heavily on His heart. Peter's fall has 
in the meantime taken place, as Jesus predicted it. He 
does what He is still able to do to save him now from 
everlasting perdition. It is, indeed, only a look of sor- 
row, of severity, and of love which He fixes upon 
him. But it is sufficient to fill Peter with the deepest 
sadness. 

The verdidl is given: "He is worthy of death.' ' 
We do not recoil with terror here as from a tumultu- 
ary proceeding, like that which occurred at the ston- 
ing of Stephen. It is the cold hatred that we feel 
which does not lack in decorum because of its in- 
tensity. Everything must take place regularly to 
show how fully considerate and convinced of duty and 
right were those by whom Jesus was condemned and 
led to death. The representative of Rome alone can 
effe<5l the judgment or arrange the execution. Every 
semblance of haste, hatred, and zeal is avoided. 
Pilate, however, needs not to confirm the sentence — 
indeed, he dares not do it. He must prohibit the exe- 
cution, the performance, for he knows what is right, 
and is the arbitrator of justice in a subjedl country. 
He sees through the tricks which led to death, and he 
will not confirm the sentence. No ; but neither will he 
prohibit the execution, because he is afraid — he, a 
Roman judge, who should fear nothing and nobody 
except to do wrong. But he is afraid, and tries to 
remove the decision from himself and leave it to Herod. 
Meanwhile, Herod finds no guilt in Jesus, and will 
neither interfere with the right of the Roman judge 
nor take away from him his duty. A conversation 

225 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

with Jesus makes it clear to Pilate that neither right 
nor law authorizes him, still less obliges him, to deliver 
Jesus to death. Even the pretext that Jesus intended 
to make Himself king fails to impress the man of 
sovereign power and energy who would suppress 
every such effort without scruple, but who can find 
nothing in Jesus by which he can verify such accusa- 
tion. On the contrary, the Kingdom whose King the 
man before him professes Himself to be is just as 
innocuous as the fruitless seeking after truth, which 
this educated Roman had given up long ago. Indeed, 
this accusation against Jesus serves him, on the other 
hand, harshly and mockingly to throw his rope around 
the accusers. He forces them to bind themselves un- 
reservedly to the Roman emperor and to forego all their 
Messianic hope. " We have no king but Caesar! " ex- 
presses their decision. 

Pilate was obliged to confirm his opinion that he 
finds not the least guilt in Jesus, and that there is 
nothing against Him except this : that He means to 
be the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the friend and 
helper of publicans and sinners, who intends anything 
rather than the overthrow of all existing conditions. 
The Jews say: " We have a law, and by that law He 
ought to die. ' ' For this Pilate cares nothing. But 
Him whom neither God's Word and law, nor the grace 
ruling Israel for ages, have pretexted, the independence 
of the Roman judge, the real man in power in the 
Jewish land, does not now protect. Not a legal error, 
but fear of men and a courting of the favor of men 
bring about this, the greatest infringement of justice 
which ever happened, for by it Divine and human 

226 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



right were trampled under feet. By a dream God 
warns Pilate ; this does not help a man who, perhaps, 
cared the more for such things because he cared 
nothing for the truth. Only the earthly realities im- 
pose upon this realist. When he had yielded already 
so far that, granting the customary release of a pris- 
oner at the Easter time, he had left to the people the 
choice between Jesus (whom, as he said, they regarded 
as the Messiah — a sign how little he thought of 
the Messianic hope) and a murderer, taken in an 
insurrection, then he had indeed committed himself. 
Israel stood fast by its hatred. The priests went about 
and stirred the people to cry : " Away with this man, 
and release unto us Barabbas ! Crucify, crucify Jesus ! 
His blood be on us and on our children ! ' ' Pilate 
lacked the courage to step back, altho he had sufficient 
power to do so. " If thou release this man, thou art 
not Caesar's friend. " This word had its effeCt. Jesus 
stood before him as a man given up on all sides, as a 
rebel, and in the face of the repeated outcry which de- 
manded the crucifixion it cost him now no special 
compunction to pronounce the sentence of death and 
to order its execution. Pilate, besides Jesus the only 
representative of right still remaining, is now obliged 
to disgrace the solemn form of the sentence of the 
judge, set in power to preserve the right, and to wash 
his hands (as he is constrained to say, in innocence), 
and thereby make up the measure of the lie. 

Jews and Gentiles arrive at the same end. Those 
do not wish for the truth which testifies against us 
all and yet alone can save us, these do not care for 
it. If ever a wrong which cried to Heaven was done 

227 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

clearly and undoubtedly, it was here. If ever a 
sentence was a lie, it was this. Jesus, however, bears 
it in silence. He is silent, God Himself is silent ; 
nothing and nobody speaks for Him against whom all 
have conspired, whom God and the world forsook and 
gave up. " All we like sheep have gone astray, and 
the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. As 
a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that 
before her shearers is dumb; yea, He opened not His 
mouth." Or should now take place the only thing 
upon which one could yet depend — the judgment ? For 
"God speaks not, but He judges," say our people. 
But God's hand did not stretch out from the clouds. 
It was God's counsel that Jesus should empty the cup 
of unrighteousness and death to the last drop, that 
judgment may not intervene. 

The sentence must be quickly executed ; this relig- 
ion demands, which has now completely sunk down to 
the pale ' ' semblance of a godly nature. M It is the 
Passover. The Jews can not become ceremonially un- 
clean, and they would like to celebrate the Passover 
in remembrance of the past and promised deliverance. 
The servile^ supremum y crndelissifmim teterrimumque 
supplichtm^ appointed for outlawed slaves, highway 
robbers, counterfeiters, seditious persons, those guilty 
of high treason, the most cruel and most disgraceful 
sentence of death by the cross, was demanded for Him 
and decreed for Him. For a sign that He was es- 
teemed nothing better than a common criminal, for 
whom there should be no more room on earth, He 
was, as the prophecy had predicated, reckoned with 
transgressors, and with two robbers He was led to the 

228 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



place of execution, forced to carry His cross Himself, 
as He once had indicated to His disciples and to those 
who should become such. Only when He sunk under 
the burden a free Israelite who just came along the 
way was forced to carry the cross for Him — a sign of 
what the chosen people of God had to expedrt from the 
world-power into whose hands they have irrevocably 
surrendered themselves with the rejection of the Mes- 
siah. 

If the inconstancy of the multitude, that in its 
hatred of the truth has a heart for everything but for 
the goodness and severity of God, has brought about 
the sentence of death, now the Lord meets, in the weep- 
ing women who stand by the way and bewail Him, 
with that undecided sentimentality which is full of 
the tears of feeling but not of penitence, and which 
delights in the horrible. It became an occasion for 
Jesus to reveal to Jerusalem the future, not so much 
by threatening the incessantly impending judgment, 
but by expressing His grief over this judgment. For 
on the way to death Jesus thinks not of Himself, but 
of His people and His people's guilt. 

The rude compassion of the executioner's servants 
offers to Him a stupefying drink at the place of execu- 
tion, which Jesus, however, refuses, for the uncon- 
sciousness of stupefaction is not that surrender of the 
will in love through which He was to suffer accord- 
ing to the will of the Father, and was not the obe- 
dience which He would and needs must render. Even 
now, even there also, as He indeed hung on the cross, 
He would have been able to help Himself if He only 
wanted, and so could have triumphed over those who 

229 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

mocked Him as the crucified One, the powerless, the 
Man forsaken of God, who had meant to be the Mes- 
siah. But no ; He wished to feel the pain and dis- 
tress and mockery which went to His soul, and suffer 
and endure it with a full, clear consciousness. No 
one, however, understood the mystery of His weak- 
ness. 

In full perception of the wrong which was done to 
Him, and in the new pain of His wounds, He gives 
expression at the very beginning of His sufferings on 
the cross to that which His soul desires for the world 
which did this to Him. Or shall we, with Bernhard 
Weiss, regard the seven words on the cross as a fic- 
tion of the evangelists, sincerely conceived and adlually 
felt to be true, which no language of Jesus had really 
warranted ? But the reasons which he assigns for it 
contain such little proof and are so purely "reasona- 
ble ' ' that only a critique which is at a loss for reasons 
can acknowledge them. For whence does Weiss know 
that, as in our time, so then also "the place had 
been shut off by the executioners, ' ' and that "no 
one of His adherents among the multitude, to which 
every access had to be refused, could by any means 
have been an ear-witness of the outbreathed prayer 
which came from His lips ' ' ? What does it mean when 
it is said that that l ' which took place in the soul of 
Jesus amidst these tortures can, upon the whole, hardly 
be put into words," and that it " certainly was not the 
method of Jesus, who had enjoined upon His follow- 
ers that they should pray in the inner chamber, to show 
to His executioners that in praying to His Father He 
has now overcome the severest trial, and that not 

230 



THE WORK OP JESUS 



His own fate filled His soul, but the merciful love 
which seeks and saves that which is lost ' ' ? A criti- 
cism which operates with such arguments, and from 
its own consciousness constructs what took place in 
the soul of Jesus in order to interpret the words of 
Jesus as unhistorical, and at the same time to give to 
the feelings of the believing congregation a certain 
satisfaction, condemns itself. We can simply let it 
alone. 

Jesus remembers the world which brought Him to 
the cross and those who have now crucified Him, but 
not in anger, not, moreover, in weak, affectionate com- 
passion, but in love, in a love without comparison, in 
mercy, which intercedes for mercy on those who de- 
serve it not. He prays for them with a word which 
comprehends their guilt and the excuse for it, to im- 
plore pardon for them and the forgiveness of their 
sins. For He would rather suffer, suffer everything, 
than that this sin, and thereby all sin, should be 
imputed to the world. So deeply has He penetrated 
and comprehended the power with which sin binds 
men, notwithstanding His profound severity and their 
disregard for His testimony to the truth, He neverthe- 
less has an excuse for them, tho they have none for 
themselves. Their very ignorance is sin : the sin of 
the people, the sin of its chiefs — they were all trait- 
ors and murderers of the Holy and Just One — and 
the sin of the soldiers, whose aCtion was also only an 
emanation from their heathenism, and thus of their 
sins, altho they knew it not. "Now, brethren," 
says Peter afterward to his people, ' ' I wot that in 
ignorance ye did it " ; and Paul writes concerning the 

231 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

chief offenders, that they had not known the secret 
hidden wisdom of God, for if they had known it, they 
* ' would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ' ' But it 
was sin, great sin, and it put upon them a guilt which 
they could not bear, just as afterward, in reference to 
his persecution of the congregation, Saul could say 
that he did it in ignorance, but nevertheless, because 
he did it, calls himself a chief among sinners. With 
His words, "Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do,'* the crucified One, immediately He 
is crucified, interposes that this greatest of all capital 
crimes be not visited upon the race and the judg- 
ment not take place which, according to Divine 
right and moral necessity, ought now to come upon 
the world. For thus was the radical contrast now ex- 
posed : On the one side, the side of Jesus, there 
was right, not only the right which the sinner also 
has when he suffers wrong, but right absolute, noth- 
ing but right, the highest, the everlasting right. On 
the other side, however, the people's side, and we 
can say it of the whole world now as well as then, 
there was and is nothing but wrong; for over against 
Jesus we are all nothing but wrong, and it avails 
nothing to turn away from such a confession for the 
sake of the pretended scientific method and so-called 
objectivity of the inquiry. The inquiry can be con- 
duced satisfactorily, the real importance of Christ 
can be known and acknowledged, only by throwing 
into the scale our own share in the matter. But 
so great and terrible was and is this wrong that only 
a step remains into the horrid, bottomless depth of 
eternal sin and eternal perdition — the sin of rejecting 

232 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



this love with which the crucified has obtained and 
effected for us not only respite but mercy. That sin, 
however, to preserve the world from which was the 
desire of Jesus, could and can only be committed after 
the mystery of His suffering has become manifest. 

After Jesus has acknowledged us fully with this 
prayer and put himself wholly on our side, one person 
only has the courage to profess Him, and he is incited 
to it through his misery. This one, however, is an out- 
cast of our race, one of the robbers who were crucified 
with Him. The representatives of godliness, author- 
ity, and law, and the other thief, who had trampled 
the law under foot, unite to mock the crucified Jesus, 
whose weakness they regard as being at last unmasked, 
and think not what it means. Even now Jesus could 
have helped Himself, but — at the price of a lost world. 
This nobody divines. Then one of the malefactors 
bears witness to Him, testifies of His innocence, and 
acknowledges His Messiahship. Whence does he 
know both ? He knows the world ; he knows how 
cold-bloodedly it can do wrong, and how it does it a 
thousand times; no one knows it better than one whom 
it rightly judges. He knows men, and believes and 
trusts them once more, and thinks them all invariably 
like himself, tho in their deeds they may still be 
different. But Jesus who, in this moment, has not 
cursed the world and His murderers, but prayed for 
them — Jesus is not like them. In such a distress as 
that in which the malefactor is, who receives the due 
reward of his deeds, Jesus alone can help ; He is the 
Messiah, and the malefactor is convinced that Jesus 
will yet some day be manifest in glory. In Him alone 

233 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

he believes, and he ventures the petition for a merci- 
ful remembering on the day of the future when He 
shall come with His Kingdom. He is wholly un- 
concerned as to whether any of the scribes will blame 
him for that. No one had any compassion for him 
anyhow, and he desired none. Jesus, however, exerts 
on him His Savior-love above all that he asked or 
thought, forgives him all his sins and all his guilt, 
pardons him, and promises him that on that very 
day when they both were suffering they should taste 
the blessedness and glory of restored innocence in the 
paradise of God. He is the Savior, the deliverer and 
pitier of those who are lost and perish. This He w r ill 
be and continue to be also in death — yes, in the very 
hour of death. Or, should this word of the dying 
Jesus have been invented, be an " ingenious, deeply 
felt" fiction which is yet truth, who had ventured to 
think it out ? 

While Jesus exercises His indestructible seigniorial 
right in unfathomable mercy, the servants disposed of 
the only thing which He possessed in this world — 
His clothes, and cast lots for His coat. Tho still alive, 
He is treated like one dead. He was, indeed, irrevoca- 
bly lost ; and thus they fulfil, without having an idea 
of what they do, in terrible literalness, what the Scrip- 
ture says of the suffering of a servant of God perse- 
cuted and smitten like Jesus. This Scripture has 
deemed it worthy to record such a suffering of a 
servant of God who, tho living, is treated as dead, and 
who must look helplessly upon that which is done with 
His belongings. 

To be sure, as to the life which He has hitherto 

234 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



lived, it is now over. This He attests Himself by 
giving John to his mother as a son, and his mother to 
John, to whom John was to render a son's duty and a 
son's love. For His cross establishes a new commu- 
nion which reaches far beyond the bond of blood 
that otherwise keeps men together. To this day it 
indeed remains that those who find themselves under 
the cross of their L,ord and Savior, as those who live 
through Him and through Him only, by their com- 
mon sentiment belong together forever in a sense in 
which brothers and sisters can not at all belong 
together. 

The world has cast Him out, the Father hid His 
face from Him, and left Him in the hands of His ene- 
mies. He experiences what it means to belong to a 
world from which, with its sin, the Father must turn 
away His face. This is the suffering of His soul, 
which He must bear on account of a world that He 
loves and that He would save from the angry judg- 
ment of God. The world has nothing left for Him 
but hatred, and treats Him as it pleases. The disci- 
ples have given Him up in despair, and have become 
puzzled and baffled ; this is their sin and His greatest 
sorrow. God, how T ever, hides His face before all 
this sin and the world which commits it, for His 
eyes are so pure that He can not see evil. He hides 
His face from Jesus also, who belongs and will belong 
to this w r orld, who will not break loose nor be released 
from it, and must therefore bear with it whatever it 
deserves. He experiences what this means when sin 
has reached its climax and God now withdraws His 
hand. The face of God, hidden from the sin of the 

235 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

world, is now also hidden from Jesus ; Jesus is forsaken 
of God. Is this truth ? Can one say this ? Yes, for 
Jesus Himself attests it. It is truth and reality. He 
is forsaken of God but He forsakes not God, there- 
fore is His sorrow so great. He who can not give up 
the world can as little give up the Father. Thus 
Jesus tastes and empties the whole cup of suffering to 
the dregs as never a man before has so drunk it. 
What is otherwise the misery of the lost, that which 
is suffered by them with inmost revolt, He bears, 
and yet remains true at once to the world and the 
Father. This forces to His lips the words of the 
twenty-second Psalm, which so truly became a Psalm 
of His suffering : " My God, My God, why hast Thou 
forsaken Me ? " It is not as if He despaired of God 
and God's government and rule, not as if He could 
not bear more than He now has to bear ; He bears it 
indeed. He knows that it is God's government and 
rule which put this suffering upon Him. He knows 
that His prayer in Gethsemane is heard by the Father, 
altho He could not grant it. Now He prays as one 
whom even this suffering of His deeply distressed soul, 
even this complete separation from God, can not induce 
to discard God, to do as of old Job's wife advised 
her husband : " Bless God and die ! " Thou art, nev- 
ertheless, my God ! — to this He adheres. He knows 
the answer to such lamentation, and the confidence 
with which the singer of the twenty-second Psalm 
closes is also His confidence, and He will die in it. 
For the time being, however, He must struggle in 
order to hold fast the confidence of His faith. That 
He is forsaken of God is a fadl. The question of 
236 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



Jesus seeks the answer, and is the prayer of One who 
has no one else but just this Father to whom He can 
commend Himself and His cause, and on whom He 
must wait till He speaks or adts. 

Elsewhere even rudeness keeps quiet when it meets 
one marked with Cain's sign. Here at the sight of 
the crucified Jesus it keeps not quiet. It mocks Him 
who moans, of whose agony it has no idea, and speaks 
as if Jesus had turned away from God, had surrendered 
Himself and His Messiah-consciousness, and only ad- 
hered to it so far as to summon the prophet Elijah to 
be His helper in need. Yes, they deride their own 
Messiah- faith, according to which Elijah was to come 
before the Messiah to settle all disputes and restore 
peace in Israel. Jesus, however, through the suffer- 
ing of the cross, despaired neither of Himself nor of 
His Father. On the contrary, He knows that the 
Scripture is now fulfilled and the salvation-counsel of 
God has arrived at its goal. Unconfounded, He yet 
humbles Himself so far as to ask these men who guard 
His cross and heartlessly look at His suffering for 
a refreshing drink ; He leaves it, however, to them to 
decide if they shall listen to His cry, " I thirst! M He 
receives the refreshment, not, however, from compas- 
sion, but from mockery. Now, however, He attests 
with a loud voice that which His soul did desire, and 
for what He lived His whole life. The counsel of 
God, the Word of Scripture, the work of God, the 
work of redemption, it is finished ! His task is done, 
for in His death the judgment is averted from His 
people and the world. Now He commends Himself 
to the Father, to the God, who resolved and promised 

237 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

the redemption and sent the Redeemer. He gives up 
His soul thereby to free many from judgment and 
destruction. His blood, the blood of the Son of God, 
is shed for many, for all, for He died that they might 
be spared and forgiven. " God was in Christ recon- 
ciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto 
them their trespasses.'' 

Darkness already for hours had covered the whole 
country, altho it was bright day, and the sun and the 
moon stood in the heavens, as it shall happen once 
again, according to the prophecy of Joel, when God 
comes for judgment. Jesus gave up the ghost, and 
the earth did quake, the rocks were rent, and the 
tombs were opened, as if the last day, the resurredlion- 
day of all the dead had come. But it was only the 
latest or the last day of the Old Covenant. Instead of 
judging and destroying the world, as it deserved, God 
caused Jesus, His Son, to die, and reckoned not unto 
the world its sin. 

Thus Jesus finished His work. Suffering was from 
the beginning His life, His way through this world, 
fallen into sin and death. His business was the setting 
forth of the Word, which was only received and ac- 
cepted by few, and was again given up by these few 
in the hour of crisis. He had known how to speak 
a kindly word at the right time to the murderer, He 
had invited the weary and heavy laden to Himself 
in order to quicken them, and He had shown every- 
where, and again and again, that He came to seek and 
to save that which was lost. He wrought miracles, 
unmistakable signs, to show that at the proper time 
in the power of God He would change and transform 

238 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



the whole world into a new world. But all this had 
been in vain. As soon as Israel's authority com- 
menced to be against Him in earnest no mouth opened 
any more to bear witness to Him, to declare that 
"never man so spake as this man," and that He is 
the Messiah — a testimony which, born of their fear and 
terror, He would not accept from demons, which He 
had refused when a token of grateful and happy 
faith from the Samaritan woman. His day was over, 
night had come. Jesus could only suffer, do nothing 
but suffer unto death. This was the deepest depth of 
of His self-humiliation with which His advent into 
the world commenced. This by necessity implied that 
He, the eternal God, had bound Himself to men in 
space and time in order to carry them over into a happy 
eternity ; He had to suffer death from men and for 
them — and what a death ! He was able, with a word, 
nay, not even with a word, but actually without a. 
word, with but a look of His eyes, with an emotion of 
His will, to hurl from Him and into the dust all His 
foes : the whole power of Israel and Rome, the great, 
yes, the greatest power of the world, and to triumph 
over all those who had laid hold on Him, whether 
with works or words or thoughts. But He did it not. 
His way was a straight way. He went from resigna- 
tion to resignation, He suffered and died in our behalf. 
This is the meaning of that momentous event which 
happened there in the corner in Judea — the greatest in 
the history of the world. Never before and nowhere 
else as long as the world has stood, and, aside from a 
short moment at the end of days, never again as long 
as the world shall stand, w T ere or shall be contrasts so 

239 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

clearly, so completely set over against each other. On 
the one side, a man who wholly and entirely lived for 
the objedl of God's great love, and wished nothing 
but to save men from that which ruins the highest 
and the humblest of their attainments, the best works 
of their art and the rudest monuments of their desire 
— from sin, and with sin death. This one was and is 
Jesus — Jesus, the eternal Savior. It is not His own 
holy life, not the complete realization of the moral 
ideal, not the indescribable and unfathomable fidelity 
and humility of His faith, nor the confidence of His 
trust in God, in which He stands before us and offers 
Himself to us, but it is His saving love. God Him- 
self offers to us in this dying Jesus the saving hand. 
Over against Him stands the multitude, the people 
of God, Israel as well as the Gentile world, all one in 
this : we will not that this Man reign over us. The 
disciples who once believed are intimidated and in 
despair. Jesus would help, but so great are sin and 
guilt that He can not help. Now we are lost ! This 
was their thought. Jesus is not the Savior, and God 
can not have mercy ! If ever a critical point existed 
in history it is now. Can God help, or can He only 
judge and punish? Why did He permit the dying of 
Jesus? Why has He not interfered? It was so 
entirely different from every ordinary situation. Much 
blood — an almost infinite outpoor — has been unjustly 
shed since the blood of Abel, and the martyrs before 
and after Jesus have patiently suffered ; but all was 
different, nevertheless, in the case of Jesus. Here 
was, as we said, all right and nothing but right on 
Jesus' part, the right which His calling gave Him to 

240 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



love, to suffer, and to save, and the power, neverthe- 
less, to be able to have it otherwise without wronging 
any o!ae. Jesus could help Himself and judge the world, 
but did it not. The martyrs also could have helped 
themselves, but only through sin, only by denying the 
truth. When they denied not, but patiently suffered 
and died, not with a curse and an imprecation against 
their enemies on their lips and in their hearts, but with 
a supplication for them, it was for the good of their 
enemies, yet only in so far as God's patience still de- 
layed judgment upon them till the last day. To inter- 
pose really, to suffer so that the others might not 
be judged, this neither they could do nor any one else 
of all those who must finally die as heirs of sinners 
and also for their own sin. For themselves and for 
their enemies they could only hope in a Redeemer 
and wait until He came. But Jesus — why had He to 
die? Why did God allow Him to die to whom He 
had professed Himself at His baptism and a few days 
afterward, and before His suffering, at the transfigura- 
tion ? Was everything over now, every hope of men 
in a Savior and Redeemer cut off? Or did it need, 
perhaps, only the recollection of His word concerning 
the Kingdom and the love of God the Father for the 
infinite worth of a human soul and the practise of 
love, in order that we do not despair, but rather be 
strengthened by the courage of Jesus and by His fate, 
which has led Him into a higher, better, tho, to us, in- 
conceivable existence ? I fear that no one would be able 
to have the courage to believe for himself that which 
he must believe of Jesus ! ' ' Whither shall I flee be- 
cause I am burdened with many and great sins ? ' ' 

241 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Whoever must pray thus is not helped by such reflec- 
tions ! And, further, to what end, then, was His 
dying necessary ? Did the i ' must ' ' in the words of 
Jesus spring only from human limitation or from a 
perception of Divine necessity ? And if the latter was 
the case, what was this necessity? Was it such a 
necessity as we have shown — either His death, His 
dying, or our judgment, our destruction? 

It is impossible really to be assured of God's grace, 
except in the thought of Jesus' blessed faith and ac- 
complished life. We are lost if Jesus' death means 
merely a victory of evil, or merely the still greater 
victory of the only good One permitting Himself not 
to be alienated from His God, whom He serves, from 
the peace of God which is for Him a counter- weight to 
the sorrow of the world, and from the effort to pave a 
way for God among men — in which, as a matter of 
fact, he has failed. Jesus' dying must mean some- 
thing far different, must mean what we already stated. 
But whereby zvas this to be know?i ? 

If ever the decisive judgment of God over the un- 
righteousness of the world, and all blood unrighteously 
shed in it, was to be expected, now was the time. 
According to all that one may see or hear of what He 
did and spoke, the only One from whom help could 
be expected for a world which had lapsed into sin and 
death had not fallen a victim to a judicial error or to 
a misunderstanding or a thoughtlessness, be it con- 
ceivable or inconceivable. He was a victim of conscious 
opposition to the Divine verdict, which He pronounced; 
to the Divine love, which He declared and practised; 
and to the Divine demand, which He made. He could 

242 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



not and would not be a Messiah according the peo- 
ple's will, and still less by grace of the people, but ac- 
cording to God's will and by the grace of God. He 
received not right and honor from the hands of men, 
but lived in His own right and in the Father's right. 
If Israel is that people which not only knew God's 
will, but in which also this will had become law ; if 
their whole history had so proceeded that this law 
ruled among them and brought blessing upon the 
people in case of obedience, and a curse in case of 
apostacy, then an entirely different judgment from any 
ever before known ought now to commence. This, 
moreover, Jesus had often enough promised, and with 
their smitten conscience the disciples expe<fled nothing 
eLse even now. They thought of the last judgment. 
What Jesus had told them: that His mission is not all 
over with His death, that rather He will rise up again 
and return to them; this they had not at that time un- 
derstood, and thought of it now still less, since the 
fadl of His death and the triumph of His enemies 
pressed upon them. Jesus had aroused in them the 
greatest, most fervent, and the most joyous hopes ; 
now these hopes were all dead. 

What the disciples had not remembered, the oppo- 
nents, however, had not forgotten. Moved by fear 
for the otherwise so insignificant company of His ad- 
herents, they appointed keepers for the tomb, and 
sealed the stone to prevent a removal of the corpse 
and the possible tale that Jesus was risen. But in 
vain. The justice of God delayed not, but manifested 
itself in a wondrous manner. If Jesus was the Christ 
of God, then this must needs came to pass w r hich at 

243 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

all times had been the hope of the oppressed, and 
which in their hard, inward struggle they had never 
abandoned, which the Psalms testify and which the 
prophets had proclaimed as the final triumph of God's 
cause and of God's servants. A Divine crisis was un- 
avoidable. The death of Jesus without any further 
results than His translation into an upper, better, 
peaceful world beyond the grave, was a giving up of 
the world to its sin and to death. That Jesus, being 
without sin, shall live on in a higher, better world is 
unquestioned. That is not to say, however, that this 
world is now opened also to them who would never be 
like Jesus. It speaks for the great historical faithful- 
ness of our records that, according to them, not one of 
the disciples, after the death of Jesus, conceived the 
idea that He and they would continue to live after 
death. They waited for a Divine crisis — nay, they 
waited not; they knew, indeed, that everything was 
lost, and themselves also. They only waited to be 
lost. That this would be the decision w r as not doubt- 
ful to them. What Jesus had said of the day of His 
coming again from heaven — the only thing, perhaps, 
which partly, at least, still remained in their memory — 
gave them the less comfort, since on their part they 
had not executed the truth toward Him. 

Then happened that which no eye has seen, which 
is nevertheless irrefragably true : Jesus was raised up 
from the dead ; rose, through the glory of the Father, 
through the fulness of the power and love of God, in 
which He is to be all that He is for us — for our sake, 
for our welfare. Jesus returned into life, not to die 
again and then forever, but £S One who He has always 

244 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



been, the Messiah, now triumphant over death, and 
therefore no more to be touched by it. Now existed 
for Him no more any bounds, since He has overcome 
death; now He could actively assert for us His eternal 
Divine essence as our brother, for He belonged and 
belongs to us and has returned in order to be ours for- 
ever, to share everything with us, whose misery and 
distress and judgment He has taken upon Himself and 
has overcome. The resurrection was His justification. 
God attested it to Him and to His own, and attests it 
to all who experience that the living Jesus deals with 
them and, through the Holy Ghost, Himself pleads His 
cause with us, and shows us that He is really and for- 
ever the Messiah, the King, the Savior, and Helper. 

To the women and disciples who came to the tomb 
the facft was made known through God's messengers, 
through angels, whose appearance legitimated them as 
messengers of God from the upper world, and whose 
words must needs be made known as words of truth 
through their agreement with that which Jesus has 
said and through their effedt, in which judgment and 
mercy united again in a supermundane, God-wrought 
union. Nevertheless, the first effedrt was only fear and 
terror among those who first heard the message, as 
well as among those also to whom they communi- 
cated it. That the hour of crisis had come over the 
world was now a matter of course, and that it was not 
to bring, that it has not brought, destruction was in- 
conceivable to them. That on account of this expec- 
tation the faithfulness of the report is attested to them 
shows how human they were, tho mistaken. Only 
the appearance of Jesus Himself loosened the ban 

245 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

which rested on them, and confirmed to them His old, 
often repeated word, now, however, more wondrously 
and gloriously revealed than they ever had conceived, 
that He did not come to judge the world but to save it. 
Everything remained in the world as it was, sin and 
death ruled, and yet all was different. They, the dis- 
ciples, all those who were conscious of the resurrection 
of Jesus, were redeemed. They rejoiced in the re- 
demption, the pardon which had now fallen to their 
lot, and from now on they could wait in God's peace 
and with confidence for the redemption of their body, 
for the forthcoming liberty of the glory of the children 
of God. 

Now it was clear to them that Jesus had no need at 
all to die if death could have no power over Him, 
that He could have been left to death only by the pre- 
meditated counsel and will of God, and that on this 
account His life, as also, according to this premedi- 
tated counsel and will, His death, should now be for 
our welfare. With His life the disciples had their 
own life again as those delivered from perdition, With 
His death the judgment over them, over the world, 
over us, had come to an end. He had died that we 
might not die and perish. This was the wondrous 
grace of God which now concerns the whole world. 
Death and what follows upon it was God's judgment; 
it weighed on the whole world as God's wrath, who 
refuses the salvation, not as a punishment measured 
after God's wisdom, equivalent to sin, but as the self- 
understood sequence for man, who would not lead 
the life that has been given to him by God in and 
according to God's will. God's wrath is, however, 

246 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



the purpose which denies us salvation. This wrath 
weighs on us. ' ' For we are consumed in Thine anger, 
and in Thy wrath are we troubled." And it did 
not yet weigh finally on us and our race, for God was 
moved with compassion that we should thus perish. 
On this account did He send His Son that He might 
belong to us, and we in Him might have God and 
everything that is God's. Therefore, the Son of God, 
the King of His Kingdom, had to die and still remain 
ours, as is made manifest in His resurrection. Here 
the whole gracious wdll of God was definitively exe- 
cuted. Christ's death was the sacrifice which Jesus 
offered, the ransom which He paid for our freedom. 
The Father, for our sakes, did not spare the Son ; He 
made Him to be sin on our behalf, treated Him as if 
not His own Son but only sin was before Him, that 
we, whom God through this exchange has restored, 
might in Him become the righteousness of God. 
Christ's blood, the blood of the Son of God, cleans- 
eth us from all sin. In Him we have indeed the 
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our 
trespasses ; He is the sacrifice of the Lamb without 
blemish and without spot, who has made us free and 
bought us for His possession ; He is the propitiation 
which God has represented to us and offers through 
faith in His blood. The apostles never tire of reit- 
erating in new terms the great facft which constitutes 
here our thesis. It is the fact on which from the 
beginning and in eternity the covenant of God's grace 
rests, and which, moreover, stamped its special mean- 
ing upon the whole Old Testament cultus, in spite of 
its analogy with all other Divine service. What 

247 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

the disciples now perceived, since they had again 
the crucified One, was the great importance of His 
cross : that on it all depended for them, that in it 
was completed everything that Christ is for us, and 
that this was the true goal, moving toward which 
He had become ours : ' ' He was obedient even unto 
death — yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also 
God highly exalted Him." So it is said of the 
crucified One who rose again : * ' God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning 
unto them their trespasses." The suffering and 
death of Christ, the crucified One, who rose again, 
have acquired for us the forgiveness of sins, the grace 
of God, communion with God. The patience and 
mercy of God, through which since Adam's fall men 
have life, and through which again and again the 
believers of the Old Covenant have received forgive- 
ness, they are bound from the beginning to this Christ, 
who suffered, died, and rose again. Everything came 
to pass for the sake of the forgiveness of sins. Christ, 
the living Christ, who belongs to us and therefore is 
ours, who died, was crucified by the world, by us, He 
is the propitiation for our sins ; a?id not for ours only, 
but also for the whole worlds and hei'ein is love — not that 
we loved God, but that He loved us, a?id sent His Son to 
be the propitiation for our sins. Who, therefore, will 
overcome the world's sin and the world's sorrow can 
only overcome through the blood of the Lamb. 

Thus was solved for the disciples the mystery of the 
history of Jesus, the most mysterious of all histories 
which have ever happened, and one which to-day no 
historian can pass by, unless for him all mysteries are 

248 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



comprehended in the reign of reason over nature, so 
that he sees them solved by the "reason in history," 
but ignores the God in history. The expectations and 
hopes till then unfulfilled — they knew that — would now 
be fulfilled. A participant in glory through the path 
of His suffering, from glory He now shall adl on the 
world and for the world. Now commences a new time 
of waiting, but different from the former waiting. 
Not as in the former manner did Jesus associate with 
His own, altho He ate and drank with them. But He 
needed not to do this. As one who had death behind 
him, who had overcome it, He now had as a practical 
proof of His Messiahship a completely unhampered 
and unlimited personality. He did not resume His 
former activity, He wandered no more about with His 
disciples to offer Himself to Israel, but confined His 
companionship first of all to those who believed in 
Him, that He might so endow them that they might 
learn to take into their hands the preaching of the 
Gospel about Him, and of the promise fulfilled in 
themselves. They were to vouch to the whole world 
that in Him, the crucified and risen Jesus, all the 
promises of God are, as Paul says, " yea and amen," 
that all who believe in Him should, as Peter says, 
have forgiveness of sins, and that He is the Messianic 
King, the peace-bringer of His people. For from 
man to man unto the ends of the earth should the 
news spread of Him, the vidlor over death, the Prince 
of Iyife, who has the keys of hell and death ; from 
man to man the possession of grace and of our re- 
demption through belief in Him should be propagated. 
This, indeed, was possible, and in this the disciples 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

whom He had chosen could now go forward; for where 
the name of Jesus is named there no more is made 
mention of one dead, of a man who once existed. Jesus 
Himself is present, and declares Himself, in the power 
of the Holy Ghost, to all who hear His testimony. They 
perceive the risen One, who waits only that the Gospel 
may be brought to the lost people, that in the course 
of our history He might also return to the lost people, 
to declare Himself and to transform the world. There- 
fore, those who believe in Him are lacking nothing as 
compared with those who saw Him with bodily eyes. 

Forty days lasted the association of Jesus with the 
disciples, during which He spoke to them of the 
Kingdom of God, which was now in the world, altho 
the world was not yet a Kingdom of God, and still re- 
sisted becoming such. Whether these were precisely 
forty days, or whether this is the round expression for 
six weeks, is wholly unimportant. Corresponding to 
the duration of other times in the history of the people 
of God — to the forty days which Moses spent on Sinai, 
to the forty days which Elijah needed till he reached 
Horeb, the mountain of God — this time was spent by 
Jesus in intercourse with His disciples. He stands no 
more merely as one among them, but is declared the 
Savior of the world. On this account, also, He is no 
more a natural denizen of the earth, but appears from 
time to time, yet always, indeed, only to His own, who 
were to carry His name into all the world. But, then, 
the day comes when He goes from them, to be from 
thence with His Word wherever they proclaim it, to 
manifest Himself as God and L,ord from heaven, and 
as a deliverer and Savior. He goes from them with 

250 



THE WORK OF JESUS 



the commission to preach to every creature, in His 
name, repentance and forgiveness of sins, and to apply 
the forgiveness to men through baptism. This is now 
no more, as with John, a merely warranting symbol, 
but symbol and reality at the same time, washing away 
the guilt of sin. The congregation that begins with 
them continues, as we see in the choice of Barnabas and 
Paul, and is to continue it to the end ; and that which 
the congregation says and which is under its super- 
vision, what the witnesses and ministers of the Gospel 
say and do to those who are likewise to enjoy the 
redemption, Christ Himself attests by His presence. 
On the harvest feast of Israel (the Pentecost) Christ 
sends His Spirit upon all His disciples, of whom one 
hundred and twenty were together at Jerusalem. With 
this commenced the gracious presence of God on earth : 
the Spirit is the first gift of the redemption, and war- 
rants the future. In the power of this Spirit of the 
presence of God's grace and salvation upon earth the 
Gospel of Christ is now preached in the whole world, 
and in the power of this salvation-presence the con- 
gregation of the redeemed waits for the coming of Him 
who declares Himself to us, and confesses Him with 
joy : Jesus Christ \ the same yesterday, to-day \ and 
forever ! 



251 



w 



XII 

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

|K can now understand the meaning of what we 
said at the beginning of the lectures — that 
Christ appears in the New Testament not as 
subject but as object of religion, of our 
religion. Christianity is not the religion which Jesus 
Himself has taught, believed, practised, but is the 
religion which consists of a personal relation of the 
believer to Jesus, communion with Jesus, and as with 
Him so also communion with the Father. Not a 
Christianity of Christ but the Christhood of Christ is 
what the New Testament gives us. Christ is offered 
to the world in the apostolic preaching, Christ offers 
Himself in His own preaching. We are to believe in 
Christ, and in Him, moreover, as the crucified and risen 
Messiah, and we are to have peace with God, forgive- 
ness of sins, strength for a godly life and conversa- 
tion, and life eternal through our union with Him, 
through faith by believing in Him, not by appropriat- 
ing to ourselves His thoughts, His knowledge, His 
faith. Christ is preached, and in His person, One who, 
instead of judging the world, rather Himself suffered 
and died, and thus suffered and died for the world that 
it might be spared from God's judgment. Christ is 
proclaimed whom God has raised up from death, and 
thus has justified ; Christ who, through the mercy of 
God toward us, returned from a death which men 

252 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

wreaked on Him, and thereby proved their whole un- 
godly and antigodly nature. Christ returned not to 
judge and to punish, but to forgive. To the whole 
world all its sins are forgiven, and shall be forgiven, 
because all sins of the world are connected with 
each other, and one produces the other, and finally 
meet in the one great sin of resistance to the Christ 
of God. Christ, the crucified and risen One, in Divine 
power sends out His disciples into all the world to 
preach repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations. 
Christ, the crucified and risen, who died and became 
alive again, who died the same death which we die, who 
was raised up from this death as we shall be raised, 
now, however, becomes manifest as the Savior. He 
was and is God, and yet becomes and remains man, 
entirely man, wholly our brother. He will only have 
and use His deity as our brother. He is the tenor of 
the Gospel. This is Gospel, fulfilled promise — fulfil- 
ment nevertheless which, in accordance with the pecu- 
liarity of all prophecies, far surpasses in brightness 
the promise itself, as the prophecy of His suffering 
remains far behind the reality. 

It is well that Harnack has said, in a sentence so 
clear, so definite, so simple that the statement could 
not be bettered, that " Christ does not belong to the 
gospel" — i.e., the gospel according to Harnack, for 
the Gospel of Jesus reconstructed by him differs most 
distinctly and most completely from the Gospel of the 
New Testament. The New Testament knows no 
other Gospel than that whose tenor is Christ, and it 
matters not whether Christ or the apostles proclaim 
it. Between these alternatives we must make our de- 

253 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

cision. The position of the whole New Testament is 
simple : Jesus Christ, yesterday, to-day, and in eter- 
nity the same ! Christ not a man who was, but who 
became alive again, who now lives forever, not as we 
continue to live after death, and as the saints, the 
spirits of the righteous made perfedl live, but who 
now lives as we shall some day live, only that He lives 
as our brother, the first-born from the dead, Savior 
and Lord over all. He lives and shall live, reigns and 
shall reign, as King of kings and Lord of all lords. 

With this Jesus who came to life again, a higher, 
supramundane power entered into the closed order of 
history, and commenced to interfere and shape it. 
History is no longer merely the story of that which 
men do with each other and against each other, of 
what they accomplish or do not accomplish. This is 
still, indeed, the main tenor of history, and the 
clearer and plainer historical inquiry knows how to 
show this and bring it to light, and describe its devel- 
opment from the beginning, the more will such inquiry 
in that direction fulfil its own purpose and serve to 
further this development. But we must not and shall 
not conceal from ourselves that all development strives 
for its goal and its end. What wisdom of this world 
can say what will be the end of development as it 
works in the hearts and heads of men — of thinkers 
and wise men, of poets and artists, of technologists 
and peasants ! Yet this is known to one — the Chris- 
tian ! The end of all is dust! But in this develop- 
ment, surrounded and opposed by it and opposing it, 
since the Gospel is preached, a new power has entered 
— the Gospel that is Christ. Christ and the world ; 

254 



THE ESSENCE OE CHRISTIANITY 

this is, since then, the theme of all real history, and 
should be the aim of all real historiography. Not 
until our own time did the struggle to shape history 
to philosophical ends really commence. The times of 
rest, which come once and again, are always times for 
the collecting of new forces to carry on the fight 
against the Christ of God with new energy, be it under 
the mask of friendship with the Gospel, be it as an 
enemy with open visor. Christ attests Himself every- 
where, but is only known and acknowledged by those 
who believe and confess His name. In and with His 
person He lives and works and sues, whose throne is 
the throne of God, who sits at the right hand of the 
Father, who, like the Holy One in Israel, "dwells in 
the high and holy place with Him also that is of a 
contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of 
the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite 
ones." 

Or can He not, then, do this ? But what is the meaning 
of this fear which falls upon us while old recollections 
awake ? ( ' Why do you visit me, ye pictures, which 
long ago I thought forgotten ? ' ' And the future stands 
before us dark and gruesome, and we have no more eye 
nor ear for anything else, performing our work me- 
chanically, while again and again sounds on the ears 
the iteration : " You are lost ! You are lost ! " Is it 
disease, is it imagination, or is it reality ? We know : 
this being lost is reality, terrible reality. We suffer 
under a misgiving of everlasting judgment, yet dare 
not show to any one our very troubled inner feeling, 
our state of apprehension. What is that ! It is not 
yet experience of Christ. It is experience of the living 

255 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

God, experience of His terrible severity. We know 
that there is a living God, we feel Him, it is truth. 

But where this experience comes— it comes not to 
every one — it is only the first step of experience of 
Christ. This is quite different. We hear of Him, we 
perceive His Word, we know His deeds, His history — 
we hear Him ! He stands living before our eyes, not 
as a recollection from childhood, but as One .vith 
whom we have to deal, man against man. It is not 
that He was one who concerns us, He is one — nearer 
than father and mother and brother and friend. Since 
He is risen He lives before us, for us, with us, as 
soon as the Word concerning Him conies to us and 
demands our faith, our acknowledgment of His truth. 
Each declaration of His Word, or of God's Word, is 
at the same time an attestation of His person. He 
speaks not merely everlastingly binding words about 
God, about the Father, about the Kingdom of God, 
about the infinite worth of our soul, about loving and 
ministering ; His words have rather a very peculiar 
power and a special importance, because they are 
words of a living One who speaks with us. Yes, He 
speaks of God, but He connects the knowledge of God 
with the knowledge of His person ; He speaks of the 
Father, but this is His Father, and we can become 
children of God only by believing in the Son. He 
speaks of the Kingdom of God, but in Him it is 
present, and only in Him have we the blessings of the 
Kingdom : righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy 
Spirit. He speaks of loving and ministering, but only 
through faith in Him who died for us, His enemies, 
do we learn to love, and can love and serve. Every- 

256 



THE ESSENCE OE CHRISTIANITY 

thing that He says is connected with Him. He does 
not merely invite us to plunge into the recollection of 
Him, and thus through a vivid presentation of His 
person and the place and time, have an after-experience 
of What He meant when He said : ' * Come unto Me, all 
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest" ; or, " Him that cometh to me I will in no wise 
cast out " ; or, 4 ' I am the light of the world, the bread 
of life, the good shepherd, the way, the truth, and the 
life; no one cometh unto the Father but by Me; he 
that beholdeth Me beholdeth Him that sent Me." 
He lives, and His Word, which He once spoke, He 
still speaks to us to-day. Therefore, therefore only it 
still stands to-day; therefore we must decide either for 
or against Him; we must and shall not merely believe 
Him, but believe in Him. He is our Judge, and again 
He Himself is our Redeemer. Nothing humbles us so 
low and nothing revives us so certainly and gives us 
such peace as He, not merely with His words, but by 
His giving Himself to us. By having Him we have 
in Him, as Paul says, the redemption through His 
blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. If we do not 
have Him neither do we have the forgiveness. 

He is not like one of the great ones of our race, not 
even the greatest of the great; He is something differ- 
ent. Since He came, the fate of every one turns on 
Him, and the fate of the whole world will finally be 
decided by its relation to Him. He rouses all our an- 
tipathy, all our indignation, and He stills all our 
misery and all anxiety, and the unrest of our bad 
conscience, which rightly accuses us, yet which, how- 
ever, He purges. As He lived and suffered by the 

257 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

hands of men, so now He lives and suffers by our 
hands. Our sin, the sin of the world, which forms 
one great whole, He bore ; our sins He forgave and 
forgives. He reconciled us with God, and obtained 
the forgiveness of God, and calls it into our heart, so 
that we have it in a reality exactly as actual as our 
sin and guilt, so that we may say, " This is — not this 
was — my sin, my guilt, but it is forgiven ! " 

This is what Paul calls the grace of our L,ord Jesus 
Christ — not the grace merely which He declares, but 
the grace which He administers. In this grace we 
have, at the same time, the Father, who adopted us 
as His children for Christ's sake. He is present to 
us with the Father in His spirit, the Holy Spirit, 
through whom He testifies to us that we are children 
of God, and who works in us the faith, and teaches 
us to pray in faith, so that we need never despair, but 
shall remain in God's peace even in persecution. He 
keeps us in faith, He helps us, so that we always have 
our joy in Him, and thus can overcome our sinful 
lust. We can finish the course, fight out the good 
fight, and keep the faith and exercise love, and ad- 
here to our hope even unto the end — all because and 
when we hold fast to Christ. If we have Him whom 
the fathomless compassion of God has for us given 
into death and for us raised from the dead, we are 
born again to a living hope through this very mercy 
of God which gave Him back to us. Without Him, 
hopeless — this was our life ! All our thinking and 
speaking and knowledge of the life after death, or of 
that which is more and, indeed, different from this — 
eternal life, of the glory of the new world — help us 

258 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

just as little as the thoughts which we entertain of 
eternal life in spaceless and timeless existence, which 
now already we ought to have, and into which w T e 
should definitively pass as soon as we have died. All 
hope in a final, everlasting redemption, in attestation 
of the power and love of God which is to end all evil 
— all hopes were gone, lowered with Jesus into the 
grave in which He was interred. Now, however, all 
hopes have become alive again with Him — living, ever 
living, hopes : there is an everlasting, incorruptible, 
and undefiled inheritance, kept for us there whither 
He hastened. Heaven and earth, time and eternity, 
past and future, appear now quite different to our eyes, 
for we are reconciled through Him : our trespass is 
forgiven, and we are God's pardoned children. He, 
yes, He is our peace ! 

Not what He taught, not His words about the infinite 
worth of a human soul, of the indispensable necessity 
to do the will of the Father in heaven, and to walk in 
that love which hopeth all things, believeth all things, 
endureth all things; not His words about the King- 
dom of God and the righteousness demanded for it 
much better and much more difficult than the right- 
eousness of the scribes and Pharisees — not any of these 
is the main thing, the principal thing. Were it the 
principal thing, then we should be worse off than the 
Jews, than Israel with its ' ' statutory ' ' law, as one 
not having rightly conceived the meaning of the idea 
law might prefer to call it. If it was already difficult to 
fulfil this c ' statutory ' ' law, how much more difficult 
is it to keep the commandments of the I^ord in the 
Sermon on the Mount, and thus to acquire the better 

259 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

righteousness! Or can this so-called "deepening" 
of the law facilitate its fulfilment ? The Lord thinks 
otherwise. And then as to the trust in God's provi- 
dence, which is enjoined: " Behold the birds of the 
heaven, the lilies of the field," yes, " Be not afraid of 
them which kill the body but are not able to kill the 
soul " — who can accomplish this? Any one who has 
been given to laudations of Paul Gerhardt's " Commit 
thou thy ways" and "If God be on my side" 
should reasonably also know the connection between 
these and his songs of the passion: "A Lamb goes 
uncomplaining forth, ' ' the ' ' Seven hymns to the mem- 
bers of the Lord Jesus," from the Latin of Saint 
Bernard, or the hymn, " O world, see, here thy Hfe! " 
Or is there a connection only in the notion of Paul 
Gerhardt ? Only he can trust in God, be sure of His 
providence and His guidance and His care, even in 
the hardest ways and in the darkest hours, who is 
reconciled with God, has God's mercy, has forgiveness 
of sins. Who has forgiveness? Forgiveness is a deed 
of God. Where, when did this deed of God happen ? 
Only in Christ's death and resurrection ? But this, 
says one, is too spectacular; the relation of God to the 
world is not effedluated in a drama, and it is no drama. 
Why not ? If the natural relation of the world to God 
is a drama with a tragic ending, why may not the 
supernatural relation of God to the world be a drama 
with the glorious finale of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ and of eternal life? If God, the timeless and 
spaceless One, should rule the world only in accord- 
ance with the eternal law, eternally established by Him, 
and according to this law once for all provide for its 

260 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

ongoing, would not the brute forces of the world-order 
of nature and history crush us ? Can God not a6l ? And 
is not this the greatness of His manifestation, His self- 
attestation in favor of us sinners, that according to 
His own eternal counsel He draws near in time to us, 
who were not created as sinners but became sinners in 
time, and adts for us and redeems us ? Let us by no 
means through any pale fear of a drama brought about 
in time, but intended for eternity, lose the facft of the 
reconciliation and redemption performed through Christ 
with a love that is timeless, eternal, forever the same, 
everlastingly transcendent! Or ought Christ to have 
come only to reveal to the world that the God whom 
it seeks in all religions and does not find is a God who 
forever evinces Himself to it with purely pardoning 
forbearance, friendliness, patience, and love, and whose 
love it knew not till Christ came, but now, as revealed 
in Him, it must recognize as the solution of the mys- 
tery — of the problem of its existence ? Then the testi- 
mony of our conscience, our consciousness of guilt 
under God's judgment, were a false testimony, and the 
man who in the New Testament still admonishes his 
readers that ' * our God is a consuming fire ' ' was 
wrong. 

No, there is nothing more wondrous, nothing less self- 
understood, nothing more paradoxical, more opposed 
to all which is logically and morally consistent than 
the reconciliation, redemption, forgiveness of all our 
sins, the adlual, Divine forgiveness, imputation of sins 
and yet forgiveness ! Here are two entirely different 
religions, opposed to one another and mutually exclud- 
ing each other. One, as with Christ Himself, connedls 

261 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

forgiveness with His death and resurrection ; in the 
other one, Himself forgives the sin. There are relig- 
ions excluding each other, of which the one is truly 
religion, the other only religion so-called. The one 
mentions the most urgent and permanent interest in the 
person and work of Christ, in whom it believes and to 
whom it prays ; the other roundly declares, with Har- 
nack, that Jesus does not belong to the Gospel. 

But how is it possible that our pardon, the forgive- 
ness of our sins, depends on one deed, on one event, 
one happening of the past, in which, as it is said, we 
were not participants ourselves ? That it depends on 
this deed of the past is evident to every one who for 
the sake of the suffering and dying of Christ has 
sought and found forgiveness, to every one who, be- 
cause of his sins, for the sake of their forgiveness, 
believes in Jesus, and whom his sins have brought to 
the feet of Jesus. One does not understand it, but 
one has it ; one would lose everything if it were not 
true ; yes, one would in very fact lose everything if we 
had no need to seek the forgiveness of the crucified 
One on account of our sins ; for the easier the forgive- 
ness the less heavy our sin and guilt, the less also 
our interest in Christ, our interest in God. There 
is left, indeed, an interest in polemics against the 
Christianity through which we seek and find forgive- 
ness by Jesus, but this interest, too, at length will dis- 
appear. On the other hand, as soon as we have found 
forgiveness in the blood of Christ and with it Christ 
the Savior, the foregoing questions come up again and 
demand answers, without, indeed, making the fact 
dependent on the necessity, or absolute correctness, or 

262 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

fulness of the answers. For it is everywhere true that 
the f acfts must first be acknowledged before one under- 
stand them or know to establish and combine them, 
and that one will accept the facets only when they 
have been understood. The understanding, however, 
of the truth with which we are concerned here — 
namely, how our eternal state can be dependent on a 
fadl of the past — is not very difficult. The question is 
expressed intentionally thus, and not as I^essing has 
formulated it: how our eternity can be dependent on 
the acknowledgment of a casual historical fadl. The 
question as we put it is more comprehensive, more seri- 
ous, and yet easier to answer than the other, which, 
properly speaking, is not to be answered at all, because 
no one asserts such a thing. That facfts of the past 
which lie far behind us can influence our eternal destiny 
is manifest to him to whom sin is not a mere result of 
the growth of humanity out of the dark, natural ground 
of unconscious existence, but a result of the fall, and 
who, with Paul, bewails his sinfulness, his carnal man- 
ner, and knows that he does sin because of his sinful- 
ness and that he is a child of perdition. But this refer- 
ence to the sin and guilt of the first created man, which 
became fatal to the whole race, Harnack, and many 
with him, would not admit, because they know as his- 
tory only the rising culture of the human race. More- 
over, this question of the inference of a past facft is not 
yet answered at all with reference to the inquiry how 
that which happened to Christ is connected with any 
pardon. For, alt ho sin is inherited so that only flesh 
is born of flesh, what business have we to claim a part 
in the grace which is manifested in this one ? And 

263 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

even if the death of Christ had concerned the entire 
race belonging to that time, how is it that it also con- 
cerns us and every man who comes into the world ? 

It was God who in Christ reconciled the world to 
Himself. God — not the thought of God but God Him- 
self — entered, in Christ, into the ordered course of his- 
tory after He had allowed the world till then to go 
for centuries and millenniums its own way, and only 
endured it that it might not perish before the time. 
It was God who, in pardoning grace, established Him- 
self in the world, who in His eternal Son became pres- 
ent to the world, and since then has remained present. 
God in Christ has endured that the world should rejedl 
Him, and endured it in order to forgive ; and thus He 
showed that His love covers also a multitude of sins. 
But what God did by uniting Himself with us in His 
Son, He did to the end that this union and communion 
might remain forever. This is the one side. The 
other, however, is this : that humanity, with all its 
sinful nature, aimed at nothing else than to be against 
God and without God, its own God and Lord. All 
this reached its climax in the rejection of Christ, and 
thus Christ took upon Himself the sins of all the 
world which till then had existed. But by living 
now and on and on, attesting and proving Himself as 
our Redeemer and Savior, He has to deal ever and 
ever with the same sinful world, whose sins He suffered 
and bore. Our sin is not only a similar sin, it is a con- 
tinuation of the same sin. Whether we make our- 
selves guilty of the same consciously or unconsciously, 
we can not get rid nor be released from the connection 
made necessary by the very nature of sin, so that 

264 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Christ bore our sin and our guilt also — the sin and 
guilt of the entire humanity. And so He, the living 
One, who died through our sin and was raised up 
through and for the forgiving grace, comes to us and 
attests to us that our sin — my sin — has brought Him 
into death, and was borne by Him, and that He brings 
forgiveness of our sins, of my sins, and that He is our 
reconciliation, and says to us: "You are [not you 
shall be] redeemed. Ye were bought with a price ! " 

Thus He forgave our sins of to-day when He asked 
the Father to forgive the sins of His murderers : 
(i Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do. ' ' As our sin of to-day weighed on Him with the 
sin of them and with the sin of the w T hole past world, 
so from the Cross the stream of forgiveness runs 
through the world, and one brother may tell it and so 
attest it to the other, so that he also can believe if he 
only will, that in Christ we have the redemption 
through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. God 
forgave our sins when Christ suffered and died and 
rose again, and therefore He forgives them to-day to 
every one who believes in the crucified and risen One, 
acknowledges Him as the Messiah of God, and there- 
fore as our Redeemer. He feeds upon this salvation 
and lives in it, and says : " Now, that which Thou, O 
Lord, didst bear is all my burden ! Thou takest upon 
Thy back the burdens which press me down, Thou 
bearest my guilt ; Thou becomest a curse, in return 
Thou givest me Thy blessing and placest me into 
God's fatherly kindness ! " 

No one, as yet to this day, and least of all Dr. Har- 
nack, has more clearly expressed the essence of Chris- 

265 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

tianity than it is expressed in the prayers and hymns 
of the Church, and more especially in the passion 
hymns. Christianity, which God consents to offer to 
the world, is the forgiveness of sins in the blood of 
Christ, the justification of the sinner in the power of 
the death and resurrection of Christ, the redemption 
of the world through Christ's death and resurrection, 
the everlasting grace of God in the giving of His Son, 
of which Jesus says : ' ' For God so loved the world 
that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal 
life. ' ' Of this says John : ( ' Herein was the love of 
God manifested in us, that God hath sent His only 
begotten Son into the world to be the propitiation for 
our sins" ; and Paul : "God commendeth His own 
love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us ' ' ; and Peter : ' ' Knowing that ye 
were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with sil- 
ver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed 
down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as 
of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the 
blood of Christ, who was foreknown indeed before the 
foundation of the world, but was manifested at the 
end of the times. ' ' This unanimous testimony of Jesus 
and of His apostles the historian and dogmatician 
may indeed reject as far as the contents are concerned, 
but he can not contest the fact that it is the testimony 
of Jesus and of His disciples, and still less that it still 
works to-day what it worked when it commenced to 
be proclaimed. 

On this account the Christianity which we have and 
should practise can only consist in the grateful accept- 

266 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

ance of the reconciliation, the forgiveness of our sins 
in the blood of Christ, and in the life, struggle, and 
work, the loving, ministering, and suffering, the hoping 
and waiting in the power of His grace. This and 
nothing else can and shall be the Christianity for all 
times. Whether we have it and practise it, whether 
we keep it pure — yes, whether we even keep the 
knowledge of it pure — is another question. Whatever 
Christianity was when it was proclaimed to the world, 
and whatever it is and shall be unto the end of days, 
whether men accept it or not, the opinion on it must 
be governed by what men have made of it — the nations 
as well as the theologians. But since the basis of Har- 
nack's doctrine — the answer to the question, What 
Christianity is in the sense of Christ and of His dis- 
ciples — is so poor, his understanding of the resultant 
question — What the Church has made of it — becomes 
the poorer, and his whole attempt as a historian to 
sublimate the essence of Christianity from the histor- 
ical appearance of the Church must be designated as 
wrong. It is the more preposterous since, just as in 
the Christian his Christianity and the testimony of his 
life very slightly coincide, so, also, in the Church the 
essence and appearance of Church, and, therefore, the 
essence and appearance of Christianity, never coincide. 
Twice, perhaps, do they coincide — at the beginning 
and at the end of history. But how early the struggle 
with sin, and therefore of sin against Christianity, 
commenced, and what intensity it can still assume, the 
Adls of the Apostles and the Apostolic Epistles show. 
On this account we must make clear and ever clearer to 
ourselves what the essence of Christianity is; we must, 

267 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

therefore, historically and dogmatically, if we must call 
it so, go back to the beginning — not, however, make 
history a judge between the transient and the lasting, 
as Strauss in his time endeavored to do, and as Har- 
nack in his manner has now also endeavored. 

It would be profitable to enter into Harnack's his- 
torical picture and to estimate and correal it. But for 
the present we must postpone this task, and shall now 
only present to ourselves two things. One is, that the 
knowledge of Christianity, the understanding of the 
Gospel as the offering of the real, present, existing 
gift of God, was lost in connection with the missionary 
problem of the Church and the education of the 
nations, altho the longing for it remained alive here 
and there, and the faith, tho troubled, sought for 
itself a place and sometimes found it, till God, in the 
hour of greatest need, raised up His servant IyUther, 
who declared unto us again the Gospel of a present 
grace experienced by him of the Son of God who died 
and rose for us. The other is a word coming from 
Harnack himself : " How often in history is theology 
only the means to set aside religion ! n Of Jesus, 
however, it is true that He alone and truly has made 
religion possible to us, for in Him we have a free, open 
access unto the Father through His blood, through 
the forgiveness of sins ! 



268 



JUL 2 1903 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



QjR, 






L 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




